


the side effects that save us

by napricot



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes & Shuri Friendship, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 06:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21249206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: “This broken white boy needs our help, doesn’t he? On account of how you sort of ruined his life?”T’Challa winces and shoots the frozen Sergeant Barnes a hilariously guilty look. “That’s not—I didn’t—really, I think his life was already—”“It’s fine! I can clean up your mess,” she tells him, still smiling. “And he didn’t—he didn’t kill Baba, so. We should help him, we should make it right. No one else can help him, can they.”How Shuri deals, after Civil War and Black Panther.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the National's "Graceless."
> 
> Been working on this one off and on for over a year, and I'm thrilled to finally post it! Next up on my WIP list of _Just Finish It and Post It, Oh My God_ is a behemoth of an Erik Killmonger time loop AU fix it. Which, incidentally, if you or anyone you know would be willing to give such a fic a sensitivity read, please let me know! I can be reached at napricotlover [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks!

“Shuri, if you can’t do this, or don’t want to—”

Shuri looks at the sad frozen white man T’Challa has stashed in a cryostasis unit. Shuri had thought she was out of tears, after Baba. But there are many tear-fed oceans’ worth of sorrow in the world, and often, their waves reach even landlocked Wakanda; reading Sergeant Barnes’ files and medical records, she’d found a few more tears. It would have been hard not to. Life has been profoundly, incalculably cruel to Sergeant Barnes.

She sets aside the memory of her tears, and turns to T’Challa with a smile. The frown creasing his forehead smoothes just a little, so Shuri counts it a success.

“This broken white boy needs our help, doesn’t he? On account of how you sort of ruined his life?”

T’Challa winces and shoots the frozen Sergeant Barnes a hilariously guilty look. “That’s not—I didn’t—really, I think his life was already—”

“It’s fine! I can clean up your mess,” she tells him, still smiling. “And he didn’t—he didn’t kill Baba, so. We should help him, we should make it right. No one else can help him, can they.”

If there’s one thing Shuri knows from looking at the files, it’s that: Sergeant Barnes will find no adequate help in the world outside Wakanda. Their methods for freeing him from these awful mental shackles would be as crude and cruel as the methods that had put those shackles there in the first place. Shuri can do better.

“No. No, I don’t think so,” says T’Challa. He sighs, but then his shoulders take on that familiar bearing: straight and steady, ready to bear any weight. “Not without hurting him more, and I think we have all had enough of hurting people. Of being hurt. But the choice is yours. The university’s neuropsychology department has already done an initial evaluation, he can remain their patient.”

Shuri takes T’Challa’s arm and puts her head on his shoulder. He rests his head against hers, and pats her hand.

“No, I can do this, and I want to do this. I think Baba would want me to.”

She peers at Sergeant Barnes, still and almost peaceful in the soft white light of the cryostasis unit. Well, perhaps Baba would not want her to do this specific thing. Obviously he would never have foreseen this unlikely circumstance of an American war hero turned prisoner of war turned unjustly accused fugitive, whose life her brother had accidentally ruined even more than it was already ruined, and who needed healing only Wakanda could provide. But, you know, in general, her Baba had wanted her to do this sort of thing, to use her gifts to help people, to help Wakanda, rather than to exhaust every last measure of patience her tutors and colleagues possessed. That’s why she’s in charge of the Wakandan Design Group now, and here is an even bigger challenge.

Shuri is equal to it, she knows she is.

* * *

It takes a few months to make true progress on helping Sergeant Barnes, far longer than she thinks it should have, but then there had been the matter of the usurper to deal with, repairs to her lab, and the new outreach centers. But now she has a tentative solution to the problem of Sergeant Barnes’ trigger words, and better still, it’s one Sergeant Barnes can sleep through. He will wake free and well, safe. He will be one part of all the chaos and change that has gone indisputably right, one injustice she can fix.

So long as these simulations all turn out as they should, anyway. She won’t take risks with Sergeant Barnes’ brain. She’s isolated the triggers, sure, but she needs to confirm that she can remove them without undue harm to Sergeant Barnes’ mind. Only once she’s as sure of the result as she can be will she run the program to remove the trigger words.

“You know there is more to healing this man than this, daughter.”

Shuri sighs. The Dora never warn her when Mother is coming. Old Dora loyalty for one of their own, she supposes. She turns to greet her mother, already marshaling her arguments for staying in the lab. She hasn’t missed any important meetings, she doesn’t think, and no one’s been calling for her with some urgent matter to attend to, so there’s no duty she’s shirking. She’s only going to stay until these simulations finish, and then she’ll go back to the palace. There’s no need for Mother or the Dora to drag her out of the lab and back to the Citadel. She stifles a scowl and nearly tells Mother just that, but she knows it would sound childish.

So instead she says, “I know. But it’s a pretty good start.”

Mother comes to join her at the computer, and she puts an arm around Shuri’s shoulders and squeezes. “It is, and I am very proud of you. But not everything can be fixed with technology. Not even when it’s _our_ technology.”

“Now you are sounding like Lord M’Baku,” says Shuri, and leans into her mother’s warm strength.

Mother snorts. “Even the Jabari don’t forsake all technology. Jabari wood is only Jabari wood thanks to vibranium. No, I only mean that Sergeant Barnes has deep wounds of the spirit, and none of this—” she taps at one of Shuri’s screens, then continues, “will wholly ease them. I don’t want to see you disappointed, or doubting your skills, if this isn’t the success you’d hoped for.”

“I’m not a child, Mother, I won’t have a tantrum if this doesn’t work. I know I can’t fix _everything_.”

“Do you?” Mother asks, and lets her go, moving to examine the latest iteration of the Black Panther suit. “Which version is this? The twentieth? The twenty-fifth?”

“Twenty-seventh. I think I’ve worked out the best way to integrate a parachute.”

Mother tilts her head and gives her a look that’s too sympathetic to be chiding. “You can’t account for every possibility, Shuri. No one expects you to. And no one expects you to fix everything either.”

“I can try though. I fixed the damage in the lab from the battle, and I’m helping to fix the world, at least a little, with the outreach centers. And I can definitely fix Sergeant Barnes’ brain. And even give him a new arm, if he wants.” Mother raises an _oh really _sort of eyebrow. “It’s for the sake of the Panther Tribe’s honor, Mother! It _is_ kind of T’Challa’s fault the poor man lost his arm again.”

Mother sighs, but she smiles too. “Take him to the country when you wake him, to Nosipho’s village. She knows what to expect, and T’Challa has the village’s consent. But if at any point you or the Dora feel he is endangering anyone’s safety—”

“We will get him to one of the secure rooms in my lab, or the palace. I know. Thank you, Mother.”

“Just remember, please, that not everything can be repaired like your lab, or improved like the Panther suits.”

Privately, Shuri thinks, _not with that attitude, no_. Out loud, she says, “I will try, Mother.”

* * *

T’Challa is king now, but Shuri can be forgiven for forgetting that when T’Challa plays messenger for the University’s neuropsych department and the War Dogs, coming to her lab with their reports and data on Sergeant Barnes and the Winter Soldier program. She doesn’t know why she or her broken white boy project warrant so much attention now; T’Challa has left her alone about it for weeks now, seemingly satisfied with her weekly updates on the slow but steady progress of her painstaking neural mapping of Sergeant Barnes’ much-abused brain.

“Why are you micromanaging me?” she asks T’Challa suspiciously when he brings her Soviet cryostasis research. It’s the fourth day in a row he’s dropping off some file or another, none of them particularly relevant to her work at this point.

She gives these new Soviet documents a cursory look: their cryostasis procedure was significantly more crude and dangerous than Wakanda’s, and it had probably pushed Sergeant Barnes’ enhanced healing factor to its limit. Terrible, as just about everything about the Winter Soldier program was, but it offers her no new insights into the trigger words.

“I am not micromanaging you,” says T’Challa, with a faint air of guilt that’s totally contrary to his words. He is _such _a bad liar.

“Then why all of this?” she asks, gesturing at the assortment of files she’s banished to the most distant screen of her work surface for the broken-white-boy project. “I don’t actually need all of it to help him, you know. Or, if you think I am taking the wrong approach, then you should just tell me that, and we can try—”

“I don’t think you’re taking the wrong approach.”

He joins her at her work station and brings up the display showing the status of Sergeant Barnes’ cryostasis unit: full power and full functioning, its occupant safe and well. That isn’t news to Shuri; she has all that information linked to one of her kimoyo beads, with any number of alerts should any of the readings change even the slightest amount. T’Challa seems to take some comfort from the steady, even blue of the _all is well _readouts.

“Then what is it?” she asks him.

“What do you see, when you look at HYDRA’s Winter Soldier files?” he asks, his eyes still on the readouts and the grim HYDRA records.

“Crimes against humanity,” Shuri answers promptly. “Evil.”

“Yes, of course, but apart from that.”

T’Challa is still looking at the screens, and Shuri squints at him suspiciously.

“Is this a lesson? Am I supposed to see something else? Because if this is a politics thing, I am going to stop you right now and say I do _not_ care. I am helping him no matter—”

T’Challa shakes his head and stops her before she can really get going. “No, it’s not about politics, and of course we will help him. But—did you look at N’Jadaka’s files too? Specifically his military service files.”

Shuri’s used to making mental leaps other people can’t follow, but this unexpected leap of her brother’s has left her entirely behind.

“Nakia went over them with me before the battle, yes. Why?”

“They’re somewhat similar. Their missions, I mean. The same methods, and the same purpose, in some cases. The United States government deployed N’Jadaka in much the same way as HYDRA did the Winter Soldier, to much the same effect.”

Shuri frowns, and tries to follow her brother’s logic. “Killmonger wasn’t HYDRA. And our murderous cousin was not tortured and brainwashed into becoming an assassin.”

“No, I know he wasn’t. But—life was not kind to him. Baba _abandoned _him. He chose his path, but I wonder how free that choice was. And I wonder if we could not have helped him as we are helping Sergeant Barnes now.”

“I think shoving Killmonger into a cryostasis unit would not have improved his disposition any, brother.”

“It could have saved his life though,” says T’Challa, his voice gone low and pained. He closes his eyes, as if imagining it. “I could have saved his life.”

“And then what?” asks Shuri.

It’s a genuine question. She has no idea where T’Challa is going with this. If Killmonger had lived, a trial would have awaited him, and he would have been found guilty. Everything he did, he did in his right mind, of his own free will. There were no triggers Shuri could have pulled from his mind, no healing she could have offered him. She’s not certain what justice Wakanda’s court would have demanded of Killmonger—his crimes, Shuri’s pretty sure, would have demanded more than some one-on-one reparations and counseling—but she’s certain Killmonger wouldn’t have willingly participated in said justice.

T’Challa gives her a thin smile, as if he’s reading her thoughts. “Yes, exactly. And then what.” He sighs. “I know it’s not the same, I know. Sergeant Barnes is a victim and all has asked for is to help keep others safe from the evils HYDRA visited upon him, to not have to fight. But if we can help him, surely we could have found a way for our own cousin—”

Shuri puts her arms around T’Challa, and he returns the embrace, squeezing her tight, tight, the way he used to when she was really little. She doesn’t entirely understand the way T’Challa grieves for Killmonger. Kin though he may have been, she’d felt nothing but relief and vicious joy on learning T’Challa had killed him, winning the challenge at last. But she is on version 30 of the Black Panther suit, so she thinks she understands a little why T’Challa is still seeking a solution to a problem that could no longer be fixed. Shuri’s optimistic and she has a lot of faith in her and her brother’s skills, but time travel is beyond either of them.

“Mother told me I can’t fix everything. You can’t either, you know.” 

“I know.”

“We can fix this sad frozen white man, at least.”

He kisses her forehead and she can feel him smiling. “I know.”

“And we have the outreach centers! For the little boys like Killmonger, who will hopefully have better choices.”

“The amount of bureaucratic and diplomatic red tape those outreach centers are tied up in…” groans T’Challa.

She gives T’Challa a squeeze. “Nakia will fix that,” she says, and he laughs.

“I know,” he says again, and lets her go. He takes one last look at the readouts of the cryostasis unit, all of them still the calm, cool blue that means _all is well_. “I will stop micromanaging you, clearly you have this in hand. But tell me if you need any help, alright?”

“I will,” she says, and she even means it. She’s got her pride, of course, but her pride barely tips the scale when a man’s sanity and freedom are the counterweight.

Shuri’s pretty sure she’s got this, though. Once she’s satisfied that she has every possible view of Sergeant Barnes’ neural map and the triggers, she’ll begin the work of removing the triggers in earnest.

* * *

Shuri is on day two of running simulations on Sergeant Barnes’ neural mapping when she gets the message from Nosipho.

_Princess, I hope your work is going well. Please come see me as soon as you are able. I understand we are to have a charge in common soon. I would like to discuss the details and coordinate his care…_

When an elder sends you a message, _as soon as you are able _means _tomorrow at the latest_. So Shuri leaves her simulations running, and asks Nareema for a ride to Nosipho’s village. It’s a short ride, but then most rides are short when they’re in the Talon jets, and Wakanda isn’t so large as all that. It takes only twenty minutes before the Talon is landing gently beside the village’s lake, where children have already escaped their lessons to greet them. Shuri indulges them for a bit before sending them back to their patient tutor, then she follows them into the village proper.

Nosipho’s village is tucked away near where the boundaries of the Border and River Tribes meet and overlap. It’s a sleepy little village, quiet and calm, meant for those who want the country life. Shuri doesn’t know if it was her mother or T’Challa who picked it as the location for Sergeant Barnes’ recovery, but whoever it was chose well. He won’t be overwhelmed by new things or too many people here, nor will he be isolated. He won’t even be the only old soldier in the village; there are a few War Dogs who have chosen to retire to a quiet life of farming and land management here.

Shuri takes a moment to speak with everyone who greets her in the village, but they know she’s here for Nosipho, and so the flow of greetings and well-wishers shepherd her inexorably towards Nosipho’s modest home on the far end of the goat pasture. Nosipho is waiting in the doorway, the bright white flash of her smile visible even from this distance. She’s a stoutly built woman who keeps her silver hair shorn short and close to her scalp. Sometimes she shaves complex patterns into it, an older Wakandan trend that’s cycled back around to being hip, but today there are no whirls and whorls. It gives her an austere air, until she smiles. When she smiles, she is as bright as the full moon.

“Princess, welcome!” calls out Nosipho as Shuri approaches. “Come, come, I have tea for you.”

Nosipho gives her tea, and Shuri drinks it, and they trade courtesies back and forth. As a child, Shuri used to be too impatient for such niceties. She still is, if she’s honest, but she sees the value in them now. They’re like the first steps of a mathematical proof: Shuri can skip past them, taking them as givens, but it leaves anyone else who’s reading her proof lost. So she’ll take the time. After Shuri fidgets for the fourth time though, Nosipho takes pity on her and sets her teacup down to get down to business.

“So. Your brother the king has provided me with Sergeant Barnes’ file.”

“All of it?”

“Enough of it,” says Nosipho, her generous mouth going hard. She takes in a deep breath as if to calm herself. “What horrors. I do not like to call anything evil, but…”

“What was done to him was evil, yes.”

“Tell me how you will help him,” says Nosipho, brisk and teacherly.

Shuri puts her own teacup down and straightens her spine, and tells Nosipho. She tells her about the trigger words, and how she intends to disentangle them from Sergeant Barnes’ memories. She tells her about all the safety precautions she will take, the thousands of simulations and tests that will take place before any manipulation of Sergeant Barnes’ actual brain or neural map is attempted. She tells her about the algorithms, about the neural mapping, about the schematics for a new prosthetic arm, about the potential for future uses of this work to help others. Nosipho listens and listens, until Shuri finishes, and then Nosipho nods and smiles.

“That is the science, and it is all very impressive, Princess. But what of his spirit, and of yours?”

“I’m sorry?”

“His _spirit_, Shuri. I do not need to meet the poor man to know his spirit must be terribly wounded.”

“That’s not my area, but I thought that was why he was coming here, once he’s out of stasis…?”

Nosipho nods. “It is why he’s coming here. But the work must start before then, with both of you.”

“Me? Why me? I’m fine, I’ve done my time with the priestesses—” she says, then stops when she catches sight of Nosipho’s unimpressed look.

“You are doing more than executing some code and healing physical ills, Princess. You are seeing all this evil, understanding it, in order to best undo it. And that takes a toll.” Nosipho reaches across the small table to pat at Shuri’s folded hands. “Especially since you are grieving.”

Shuri wants to make an automatic denial, but any denial would be a lie, and a shameful one at that.

“It’s been months,” she says instead. She is past the worst of her grief, she _is_.

Nosipho nods, and squeezes Shuri’s hands. “Yes, it has. And the losses were great. Your father, and Zuri, and your cousin, and your brother…”

“I do not grieve the usurper,” snaps Shuri. “And my brother the king is alive and well. No need to grieve him.”

“That does not change the reality that you did grieve him, for a time. Grief is a patient visitor, Princess. When you don’t wait for it, when you don’t offer it a home, it will wait, and it will come in and make a mess when you least expect it or want it.”

“Then I will kick it out.”

Nosipho’s lips twitch into a smile, her dark eyes rueful and fond. “Oh? Is that what you will tell our charge Sergeant Barnes to do as well? He has much to grieve, I understand.”

“That’s different.”

“Perhaps. Ah, don’t give me that scowl, Princess. I only want you to be mindful of the hurts of the spirit that cannot be eased by algorithms and neural mapping, that is all. When the time comes, call me.”

“What time? When he’s out of stasis, or when I’ve removed the triggers?”

“No. When you must share the pain—yours and his—in order to ease it.” Shuri frowns and opens her mouth to ask more questions, but Nosipho pours her another cup of tea. “Now, let us speak of the practicalities. He only has one arm, yes? I will make sure his living space is accessible—”

* * *

Nosipho’s talk of spiritual healing is all well and good, but Shuri has her own priorities. She has been tasked with removing the trigger words and healing Sergeant Barnes’ brain, and any spiritual or emotional healing will have to wait until that is dealt with. She’s pretty sure that Sergeant Barnes would agree with her. 

The trigger words are embedded viciously in Sergeant Barnes’ memories, each one like a hook that will tear cruelly if ripped free, or like a thorny vine that chokes and kills the struggling plant it climbs on. The conditioning and neural manipulation had been done crudely, but effectively enough. HYDRA had been lucky, though. Only an enhanced person could have survived this process without the kind of brain damage that would seriously impair their functioning. As it is, there’s evidence that Sergeant Barnes’ brain has tried to heal the damage on its own. Synapses have regrown, connections to memories that had been burned away have reformed. Unfortunately, something like scar tissue has grown over the trigger words, the brain’s attempt at a protecting itself. 

Shuri is loathe to pile violation on top of violation, but she has to look at some of his memories to make sure she’s not doing even more damage by removing the trigger words. It’s all still in the digital reconstruction of his neural map, so no matter what, there will be no damage to his physical brain. Even so, they’re still representations of Sergeant Barnes’ memories, core parts of his psyche, and she’s a stranger to him. She can’t help but feel like a trespasser in Sergeant Barnes’ mind. He’d given his consent to whatever treatment was necessary before going into stasis, and Captain Rogers, his medical proxy, had approved of trying out this treatment too, but Shuri suspects that neither of them had any idea viewing another person’s memories like this was even a possibility.

To be fair, it hadn’t entirely even _been_ a possibility before Shuri had come up with this particular way to strip away the trigger words. Her work isn’t about pressing delete a few times, and resetting poor Sergeant Barnes to factory default, as it were. The triggers are likely embedded too deeply for that, linked with and bound up in Sergeant Barnes’ memories and personality, and she’d be little better than HYDRA if she went around deleting everything associated with the triggers. She has to sift through and untangle the poisonous triggers carefully, and leave Sergeant Barnes’ mind and memories intact. If Bast and Sekhmet smile upon her work, she’ll leave them better than she’d found them, even, clearer and lighter. And hey, as a bonus, some of the algorithms and processes that can help her do that could do wonders for the advancement of artificial intelligences too.

To think, T’Challa had thought she maybe wouldn’t want to do this, or that she’d be willing to leave it to the university’s neuropsych department. As if. They would never have taken this approach, and then Shuri wouldn’t have found a whole new path towards improvements to neural networks and artificial intelligences…that could come later, though. Right now, she has a broken white boy to fix.

She will not need to look too closely at any memories, she tells herself. Only enough so that she can validate the neural mapping and more precisely calibrate the algorithm that will strip the triggers out. She will be careful and she will be calm, and above all, she will seek to do no harm. She takes a deep breath, brings up Sergeant Barnes’ neural map, and dives in.

* * *

She starts with the most tangled knots of memory and trigger, the worst of the brute force conditioning. She doesn’t have to look too closely at any of this, after all; it’s all too apparent what was done: torture paired with conditioning and triggers, one cruel and horrific reinforcement after another. Losing these memories along with the triggers tied to them would be no great loss. Even if Sergeant Barnes is left with these horrible memories, Shuri can at least ensure that they won’t wear even deeper traumatic grooves into his psyche.

_Don’t look, _she tells herself, but she has to be thorough, and what if there is something there, what if there’s some cruel fail-safe, a trigger within a trigger—so she looks.

She regrets it pretty immediately.

She’s safe in her lab, she’s only seeing reconstructed images formed by a digital recreation of Sergeant Barnes’ brain replaying a memory, and yet she feels as if she’s been plunged into a nightmare, or into a horror movie exponentially worse than the ones her silly classmates used to illicitly download and dare each other into watching. With a wave of her hand, she shoves the memory aside, but the next one is just as bad, and so is the next, and the next, and the next. She goes deeper along chains of association, hops from one linked trigger to the next, and it’s all war and pain, violence inflicted on Sergeant Barnes and on others.

It was one thing to read the Winter Soldier files, to intellectually understand. It’s another thing to see it.

_It’s just data_, she tells herself, and keeps going. It’s data that confirms her method of treatment will work, so she ignores the tears streaming down her face and dives in deeper, until she finally reaches an oasis of a memory.

_Seventeen_ is the trigger associated with this one, at least according to the neural map. It’s a memory drenched in warm, golden light, and nothing much is happening. She sees Sergeant Barnes’ hands holding a book—both of them flesh and blood, so it’s an older memory—and while the words on the pages are blurred, everything else is sharp and clear: the late afternoon light streaming through the window, the small, tidy bedroom, and sharpest of all, the room’s other occupant, a thin young white man with fair hair, sprawled on the other end of the bed Sergeant Barnes is sitting up on.

She sends this memory over to the sand table and watches it rise around her, rendered almost real by the lights of the table’s holograms. Sergeant Barnes himself is blurry and vague in the memory, which is to be expected, if eerie; people don’t generally have a strong sense of their own image in their own memories, since you can’t see your own face. The other person is clear though, and with a jolt, Shuri finds that she recognizes him. It’s Captain Rogers, much younger and much smaller, but recognizable now that she can look closer. Captain Rogers is sitting up on the bed, his back against the wall, writing or drawing something in a notebook. He keeps looking towards Sergeant Barnes, then back down at his notebook, so perhaps he’s drawing.

Shuri wonders what it is that makes this particular memory the anchor for a trigger word. It seems innocuous, boring even. She examines the memory’s nooks and crannies for a clue. _Seventeen, seventeen_…maybe it’s as simple as Sergeant Barnes being seventeen in this memory. Squinting at Sergeant Barnes himself, she can only tell that he seems slimmer and younger than the man lying in her lab’s cryostasis unit. Maybe if she could hear the memory too…she activates the sand table’s audio. The background hum of a city and the sounds of an occupied house are what she notices first, and then Sergeant Barnes speaks.

“Are you getting my good side, Rogers?” he asks.

Rogers makes an exaggerated sad face. “Sorry to tell you, Buck, there isn’t one. Your whole face just looks like that.”

Barnes laughs and nudges at Rogers’ legs with his bare feet, and Rogers smiles. Rogers goes back to drawing, and Barnes reads his book, and everything is golden and quiet. If the other memories were nightmares, then this one is a sweet daydream, and a welcome reprieve. Shuri sits in the sand table, and in the holographic display, it’s as if she were sitting on the floor beside Barnes’ bed. _I’ll just stay here a while, _she thinks. She’ll figure out how the trigger is implanted here, then move on and check for the others_._

She’s idly contemplating a way to speed up the testing of her trigger removal algorithm on Sergeant Barnes’ neural map when Captain Rogers says, “There, done. You can move now.”

“Let me see!” says Barnes, and a tussle ensues as Rogers tries to keep Barnes from seeing the notebook. Laughter and affectionate insults fill the air, and Shuri smiles.

Rogers doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to hide the notebook, because it doesn’t take long for Barnes to pin him to the bed by the graceless if effective measure of sitting on him as he carefully wrests the notebook away.

“I’m not sure I’m good with faces yet,” Rogers says as he shoves Barnes off of him.

Shuri peers down at the notebook along with Barnes. “False modesty becomes no one,” she tells the memory of Steve Rogers, because on the page is a finely detailed sketch of Barnes.

The sketch is somewhat smudged, some of its lines hesitant and uncertain, but it’s an excellent likeness as far as she can tell. Barnes was a pretty cute teenager, sweet-faced and still chubby-cheeked with the baby fat of youth. He probably really is seventeen in this memory. Young or not, Rogers has still given the sketch of Barnes a sharp, pensive kind of gaze that lends his youthful handsomeness some gravity. Barnes’ own face in the memory fills in, gathering definition and detail as if the sketch was a mirror he was looking into.

“Steve…this is amazing, holy shit.”

Rogers is leaning against Barnes’ side now, looking anxiously down at the sketch alongside Barnes.

“Really?”

“Yeah! You’ve gotten so much better! Told you art class was worthwhile!”

Barnes slings his arm around Rogers shoulders and gives him a rough, happy sideways hug. It brings the two boys in close proximity, and when they both turn to look at each other at the same time, their faces are very close indeed. Rogers’ eyes flicker towards the general region of Barnes’ mouth. They lean even closer.

_Oh_, thinks Shuri, and turns the sand table off with one sharp twist of her command bead.

_Seventeen_. She understands now. How horribly cruel to turn even that memory into a chain to bind Sergeant Barnes. How awful it would be to lose the memory and the trigger both. She wonders how many of the triggers are like this, bound up in innocent joy. She wonders how much of Sergeant Barnes will be left, if she can’t remove just the triggers and nothing else.

She thinks of her own first kiss too: a nervous and rushed affair at a festival that had morphed into an elated make-out session. Demi was just a classmate, a mild crush who was still a friend, the memory of their enthusiastic and not-especially-skilled kisses a little embarrassing now, and still, if that memory had been used in service of shackling her mind…she’d hate the chains, but she thinks she might hate to lose the memory even more. And if Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers were, or are, more than just best friends, she’s certain Barnes would feel the same.

It’s not fair. It’s cruel and it’s not right and it’s _not fair_.

“You can fix this,” she tells herself. Her voice is loud in the silence of the lab.

She will just have to be sure, then. She will have to make sure that she only pulls the triggers out, and not the memories they’re associated with too. The alternative is unacceptable.

* * *

Fixing Sergeant Barnes’ brain is far from Shuri’s only project. She has many, many other demands on her time, so while poor Sergeant Barnes is near the top of her list, priority-wise, she can’t afford to drop everything else for him. Besides, she has to submit her treatment plans, neural mapping, and simulations to the university hospital’s neuropsych department for their approval before she moves any further.

Shuri’s plenty confident in her work, but one doesn’t go mucking about in another person’s brain without having someone else, multiple someones, check one’s work.

Apart from Sergeant Barnes, Shuri is also in charge of the ongoing work on the Black Panther suit, of which she is now on iteration 39. She thinks she’s getting close to achieving the ideal balance between force absorption and force redirection, along with a failsafe measure for long falls. The parachute thing had not worked out, in admittedly hilarious fashion, what with the nanotech failing to distinguish the correct direction in which to deploy, so Shuri’s trying something new instead. If the nanotech that makes up the suit can be programmed to respond to terminal velocity and sudden concussive force by redistributing stored kinetic energy to counteract the force of gravity...well, then T’Challa will not have to worry about long falls or explosions. The programming is fiddly and complex though, and thus far the failsafe keeps being set off by short falls, so that’s something she has to fix.

There’s her work with the Wakandan Design Group too, collaborating with her colleagues on new projects and working on tests of new tech, plus doing the leadership thing. Leadership, Shuri is finding, is often a matter of meetings. Many, many meetings.

And, as if all that isn’t enough, there’s the inaugural Wakandan educational outreach center in Oakland. The building itself is under construction now that all the appropriate permits have been acquired. That part at least isn’t her responsibility; a Wakandan architectural firm is working with a firm based in Oakland on the design and building. As for the outreach...well, that is at least only partly Shuri’s responsibility, and it’s proving to be significantly more complex than expected. She has read many, many lengthy reports and books demonstrating just that, and she is, perhaps, somewhat frazzled when she meets with Nakia about progress on the outreach center.

“One outreach center cannot fix decades of redlining!” says Shuri as she pushes the book towards Nakia. “And there are maternal mortality rates to consider, and medical care—we should include a free clinic in the outreach center—and there’s that horrible American carceral system, and—”

“Shuri,” interrupts Nakia. She puts her hand on Shuri’s. “One outreach center is not meant to fix decades of redlining and high maternal mortality rates and the entire carceral system. The free clinic though, now that is a good idea. We could also provide financial support to existing free clinics in the area.”

“If we don’t fix all of that, then the outreach center is like sticking a bandage on a patient with sepsis.”

“No, it is one small step towards a bigger goal. This is the work of decades, of generations.” Nakia tilts her head and raises her eyebrows at Shuri. “Or do you want to do this Killmonger’s way?”

“No! Of course I don’t—”

“Because he is the one who wanted to do things fast, who wanted to overthrow everything.”

“It just—it doesn’t seem like enough.” Shuri gestures towards the building plans, the outreach objectives. “None of it seems like enough.”

Nakia smiles at her, more kind than condescending. “I know. You are used to more immediate results, I think. You come up with some grand new innovation, and there is immediate improvement or you’ve fabricated a new invention, or your nanotech heals life-threatening wounds. But this work? It is not like that. You alone can’t fix these ills, nor can one innovation. It’s like planting seeds instead. We will see the garden begin to grow, and we can help it with the best conditions possible, but it may be some time before it’s fully in flower.”

“Since when do War Dogs plant gardens?” grumbles Shuri, and Nakia’s smile turns sly and secretive.

“War Dogs do a lot of things, despite the name. Have patience, sister. We are building something beautiful.”

* * *

Shuri gets it, okay? She’s not patient. She’s young and brilliant and moving too fast for the rest of the world. Baba had always told her so, and so had Zuri.

But they aren’t here anymore, are they. Shuri had not been able to save them, had not even been offered the chance. 

That’s not happening again, not to anyone even remotely under her care.

* * *

Ten trigger words, ten red and pulsing points of pain in a dense and glittering neural map that surrounds her sand table. There are dark spots on the map, like neighborhoods in a city that are experiencing a power outage: neurons and memories gone dark, thanks to synapses HYDRA burned away. She’s not worried about those. She has nanites that can fix that.

“Princess? You called for me?”

Shuri doesn’t stand up from where she’s sitting in her sand table. She stays seated, the grains of vibranium sand under her warm and almost abuzz with potential. Sergeant Barnes’ memories orbit around her like satellites made of light and shadow. It’s rude not to stand to greet Nosipho, but Shuri’s sure Nosipho will understand. Snapshot after snapshot of a lifetime of horrors surrounds her.

“I did. You said to call you, when I had to share the pain. So. I have called.”

Nosipho steps through the holograms and joins Shuri at her sand table. She settles down with a grunt, her bones audibly protesting the position.

“You have made good progress, it seems.”

Shuri snorts. “Of course I have. I know how to remove the triggers. The neuropsychiatrists have concurred, I am only running the simulations now. Once the rate of success in the simulations is high enough, I will remove the triggers from Sergeant Barnes’ actual brain. Then I will send the nanites in to repair what damage remains, and then we will bring him out of stasis enough for the neuropsychiatrists to do their work. They should be able to ameliorate some of these traumatic patterns and responses. Then we will wake him.”

“That sounds like a thorough and successful course of treatment, Princess,” says Nosipho gently, so ridiculously gently. “So why are you crying?”

“Do you _see_ these memories?” Shuri demands, and flings a hand out to gesture some of them closer: Sergeant Barnes on an operating table, awake and aware through an operation; soldiers blasted to nothingness right in front of him; fight after fight, death after death, with bare hands and knives and through a rifle’s scope; the terrible metal halo of that nightmare of a brain-wiping chair. “How can I fix any of this? How can I make this better?”

Nosipho doesn’t offer Shuri a platitude, which is good. If she had, Shuri would have screamed. Instead, Nosipho looks at each of the memories, sorrow etched deep on her face.

“Such violence, such suffering,” she murmurs, and sighs as she sends the projections back. “Well? Is this the sum of this man? His pain and his violence and his terror? Is this all he is?”

Shuri thinks of the memory linked to _seventeen_, and of countless others she’s seen in the course of tracing the triggers: the camaraderie between Sergeant Barnes and his fellow soldiers in the Second World War; the adoration of his little sisters, and Sergeant Barnes’ patience as he fixed their hair and read to them and helped them with their studies; the books he read and the things he wrote; the women he danced with, all of them smiling and glowing with exertion and delight; and Captain Rogers, always Captain Rogers, bright and beloved in Sergeant Barnes’ memory.

“No,” she whispers.

No, the suffering isn’t all that Sergeant Barnes is. He is a good man, that much Shuri knows: the better memories have shown Shuri a brave and kind man, steadfast and loving, if sometimes brash and moody, and even the worse memories show his strength of will. Still, there is so much pain here. Shuri can’t fathom how to ease it, how to make it better.

“And are you meant to ‘fix’ this man’s suffering, all on your own?”

“I have been charged with healing him, but—”

“Ah ah, you have been charged with removing these trigger words. That does not equate to healing Sergeant Barnes. This is only the beginning, Princess.” Nosipho waggles her head in a thoughtful sort of way. “Or perhaps the middle, but certainly it’s not the end.”

“Because healing is a process,” says Shuri, impatient. That’s a platitude, even if it’s one that has some truth. “I know.”

“Yes, and it’s a process that no one undergoes alone. Or at least, that no one _ought_ to undergo alone. Sergeant Barnes understood that, I think, given that he submitted himself willingly to stasis and to our care.”

Shuri squints suspiciously at Nosipho. She suspects a _lesson _is underway, one of the tiresome touchy-feely ones, and she’s pretty sure she gets the gist.

“I called you, didn’t I? I know I cannot do this alone. I know _he_ cannot do this alone.”

“Hmm. There’s knowing and then there’s _knowing_.” Nosipho heaves herself back up with a groan, as a chorus of rather alarming crackles and pops sounds from her knees. She holds out a hand to Shuri. “Come. Before you do anything else, we are going to the temple for some prayer and meditation, and then you are going to have a big meal and a full night of sleep, and then you can return to this with fresh eyes and a lighter heart.”

* * *

Shuri duly engages in some self care, and lets the simulations run their course. She even demonstrates heroic levels of self-restraint and only checks on the simulations four times an hour. Do her checks serve any real purpose? No, not really, since she’d get an alert if there were any problems. And yet, she keeps checking, just in case the rate of success starts trending downward. After two days, the simulations finally reach the requisite threshold of near-certain success, and Shuri gets to work on Sergeant Barnes’ actual brain. 

Nosipho joins her in the lab when she’s about to enter the commands to start the process.

“Are you here for me or for him?” Shuri asks.

“Both, of course.”

Shuri bites her lip, her fingers hovering over the final commands. “No offense intended, but I hope neither of us has need of you just yet, Nosipho.”

With one deep breath, Shuri executes the command that will begin removing the trigger words. She scarcely takes her eyes from the status readouts, as if fixing Sergeant Barnes’ brain is subject to the observer effect. Or maybe it’s just like a vigil, one Nosipho sits with her. The nanites and algorithms do their work regardless, heedless of their observers, and four hours later, it’s done.

“Well?” asks Nosipho.

She cycles rapidly through all the readouts and logs before she sighs in relief, and she beams at Nosipho.

“We can only be certain once he’s been removed from stasis, but I am 95% sure it was successful.”

Nosipho’s congratulations are effusive, and Shuri indulges in them for a moment, returning Nosipho’s hug with a tight embrace of her own.

“He’s basically your charge now,” Shuri tells Nosipho once she lets go. She clears her throat and discreetly blinks away any traitorous tears of relief. “I’ll bring him over as soon as he’s thawed out.”

Nosipho isn’t too fooled by Shuri’s attempts to recover her cool scientist composure, judging by the fond smile on her face, but she steps back anyway, and mirrors Shuri’s attempt at professionalism with a solemn, “I will be ready.”

* * *

Shuri’s main plan for waking Sergeant Barnes is to make it as unlike HYDRA as possible. So that means no labs, no guards, and no confinement. As soon as she’s confident that he’s free of any complications from coming out of cryostasis or from the removal of the trigger words, Shuri has the still sleeping Sergeant Barnes transported to Nosipho’s village near the border.

The village children are already wildly curious about him, poking and whispering around the hut Sergeant Barnes is sleeping in, as they slowly work themselves up to creeping inside it.

“Don’t startle him!” she tells them. “And let him rest!”

“Yes, Princess!” they chorus, but of course they end up sneaking in to see Sergeant Barnes anyway. Shuri allows it; being woken by curious children is surely the absolute last thing he would expect, and the total opposite of his prior post-stasis experiences.

She congratulates herself when Sergeant Barnes comes out of the hut looking vaguely confused but not at all homicidal, and about as dangerous as a dazed lion cub. She’s not sure how to read the look in his eyes as he looks around the village and at the lake: it’s like wonder’s sad cousin, and she doesn’t quite understand the reason for it.

“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Bucky,” he corrects her.

“How are you feeling?” she asks him, and earns a very small and still pretty sad smile.

“Good,” he says, then, “Thank you.”

He’s more soft-spoken than she’d expected. But his eyes are clear and he looks well, so Shuri thinks _yes! I did it!_

“Come. Much more for you to learn.”

They take a sedate walk around the lake as she tells Sergeant Barnes—Bucky—who she is and what she’s done to help him. He asks her a lot of questions: _where are they, how long has it been, where’s Captain Rogers, will he need to go back into stasis, what happens next_. She takes the questions as a good sign, and answers as best she can. When he starts to seem especially wide-eyed and overwhelmed, she diverts their course over to the village center, where the medical staff she’d brought along glare at her and ply Bucky with fluids and porridge. Whatever, he isn’t going to keel over if he waits half an hour to eat and drink something. And he has a prime bead now, Shuri would know if he was in any acute distress.

She waits until he finishes eating, then she rattles off the trigger words, fast enough that Bucky has no time to do anything other then tense up. Like ripping a bandage off, this is best done quick, before he or anyone else has a chance to get themselves worked up about it.

“Ready to comply?” she asks cheerfully.

“No!” says Bucky, wide-eyed, his face gone fish belly pale. Shuri squints at him. She’d always thought it was a figure of speech, describing white folks as “greenish” when they look ill, but Bucky is indeed looking distinctly greenish. “That—Princess, that wasn’t safe, I could have—”

The Dora Milaje look murderous, and Shuri’s going to catch an earful from Mother and T’Challa, but _#no regrets_.

“Those words don’t turn you into an indiscriminate murderbot unless someone gives you orders to that effect, which I would not have done, and, as you can see, they no longer work anyway! Because I am just that good. And now that that is out of the way, without any tedious security theater—”

“Princess, if that hadn’t worked—” says Ayo, low and furious.

“He would have _asked for orders_, not gone around attacking everything in sight. And it did work, and this way we all got to avoid treating an innocent, traumatized man like a weapon,” snaps Shuri. If there is one thing she took away from reading the files, from seeing some of the memories locked in Sergeant Barnes’ much-abused synapses and neurons, it is that she would not have even the smallest part of doing anything close to treating this man like a weapon again. She turns to Bucky. “You are here for healing, not containment. You are safe here, I promise you.”

Bucky lets out a short and sharp sound that’s far too disbelieving to be a laugh, and presses a trembling hand to his eyes.

“I don’t give a damn—pardon my language, Princess—but I don’t _care _if _I’m_ safe. I care that other people are safe from _me_. I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to hurt anybody. God, there are _children _here, and I—” Bucky’s voice cracks, and his hand clutches and twists at the fabric of the shawl around his left shoulder.

This, somewhat paradoxically, makes Ayo and the other two Dora Milaje on guard relax. Meanwhile, Shuri’s having a somewhat embarrassingly belated realization.

“_Oh_. Right, of course.”

The words come out stilted and awkward. She knows, of course, that the Winter Soldier is very dangerous, and that Bucky Barnes is too. She’d just been most concerned with _his _safety, and figured she and the Dora could handle any confused violence on Bucky’s part. Which, clearly, had been the correct choice! Given that Bucky is sitting here doing nothing more harmful than giving her ludicrously effective puppy dog eyes. She rallies.

“Well, you’re safe in all meanings of the word! I chose this way to wake you for a reason, Bucky. I trust in my work, and I trust that you wouldn’t hurt anyone, given a choice. It is time for you to trust in that too. And even if you had been confused and lashed out, well, that’s what the Dora are here for. All is well.”

Bucky turns away from her, and takes in a few deliberate and shaky breaths, before he looks at her again.

“Alright. If you say so,” he says, without much conviction. Well, he’ll learn the truth of it soon enough. “What’s next?”

“Some cognitive tests and scans, I brought the equipment with me. Then I’ll introduce you to the rest of the village. I’ll be returning to visit you once a week or so, to make sure the trigger word removal sticks, and to make sure you’re not having any complications from the stasis or treatments. Would you like to take some time before we begin?”

He squares his shoulders and shakes his head. “No thank you, Princess. I’m ready now.”

* * *

They go to the hut that’s been set aside for Bucky, and Shuri lets Bucky poke around while she sets up her equipment at the hut’s tiny table. It’s a small, deceptively simple space as Bucky quickly finds out, and she almost hates to stop his fascinated explorations of the high-tech kitchenette hidden in rough-looking cabinets.

“This is one of the border villages that had to stand up to outside scrutiny, before Wakanda revealed its true self to the world,” she tells Bucky. “That’s why everything seems way more low-tech than it actually is. However, despite appearances, I assure you there is indoor plumbing, it’s just in what looks like the outhouse out back. And all the power is wireless. Now come, let’s take a look at your brain now that you’re awake.”

Bucky joins her at the small table, his expression no longer soft with wonder and curiosity, but instead tense and harsh.

“What’s that?” he asks as she arranges the beads that will become the scanning grid.

“This is the scanner.” With one twist of her kimoyo beads, the scanning grid activates, rising up in front of Bucky’s face. He blinks in surprise, the tense lines of his face already easing. “Stay still for just a moment...and done.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” She projects Bucky’s brain scan into the air above the table, and gives him a reassuring smile. “All is as it should be! See here and here? Some of the lesions from the wipes have already healed, and these ones are on their way towards healing. And...see here, if we look for the patterns that indicate the trigger words—” She brings up a comparison image from Bucky’s pre-stasis neural maps. “We see that they are no longer present!”

Bucky looks at the images with wide, fascinated eyes. “Wow. So...that’s it, it’s all just...fixed?”

“The trigger words almost certainly are. The damage incurred from your time with HYDRA is healing well too, and in the course of removing the triggers, we also eased some of the…I guess you would call them traumatic patterns. You will, hopefully, experience a modest improvement in PTSD symptoms. You should still make sure you rest, and get plenty of sleep, stasis is no substitute for the work the brain does in REM cycles. You may find that you still feel tired, and that’s normal, after stasis. Take things easy, do some gentle exercise to warm your muscles up again.”

“Uh, what counts as gentle?”

“Walking around, short swims, that sort of thing. Oh, and the village has a communal kitchen, I’ve let them know about your nutritional and metabolic requirements as you’re healing.”

“Okay. Thank you. I can cook for myself though, it’s fine—”

Shuri eyes him. “If you say so. You can take that up with Nosipho. I’ll introduce you to her later. First, some cognitive tests.”

Bucky breezes through the cognitive tests; he has a sharp mind, and thankfully, stasis and Shuri’s treatments have done nothing to dull his intellect. He solves math equations easily, and when Shuri tosses some more advanced ones in, just to mess with him, he tilts his head, furrows his brow, and after a few minutes, solves those too.

“You never attended university, did you?”

“No? I mean, I took some art classes with—with Steve, and a couple accounting classes at city college, but—”

“Hmm. Perhaps you can take some classes here,” she says, and before Bucky can object or refuse, she moves on to more language-oriented tests.

When she’s assured that nothing in Bucky’s much-abused brain has gone terribly awry—no aphasia, no cognitive deficits, motor skills well above average, apart from some understandable wobbliness thanks to the absence of his left arm—Shuri only just stops herself from heaving out a relieved sigh. It wouldn’t be professional. She _is_ relieved though. _Go Shuri, you did not further harm this poor, horribly traumatized former prisoner of war!_

“So?” asks Bucky. “What’s the verdict?”

“You tell me! How do you think you did?”

A tiny smile lifts up the corner of his mouth. “Feel about as dumb as I normally do, so I figure I did as well as I could.”

Shuri rolls her eyes. “I know I set an impossible standard, but you’re far from dumb. Now. One more test. Very easy. Just watch these videos for me, please.”

She pulls up her carefully curated for just this occasion selection of videos. For the first minute or so, Bucky just watches them with narrowed eyes, as if looking for a trick or a twist. Which is disappointing, because Shuri has not painstakingly selected the finest of vines for him to just watch them all with no discernible reaction. Actually, thinks Shuri, beginning to feel a frisson of unease, shit, maybe this is a bad sign. This wasn’t actually _meant_ to be a test, but if Bucky doesn’t even crack a smile at any of these, it doesn’t bode well for his emotional health—

But no, finally he laughs. Just a short, almost immediately muffled burst of laughter, but whatever, Shuri will take it. He laughs again just a few seconds later, as a woman asks a small child, _What have you got there?_ and the child gleefully responds _a knife!_ before running away. Bucky immediately claps his hand over his mouth as if to take the laugh back.

“Oh my god, that’s not funny. What if the kid hurts himself—”

Shuri cackles. “Aww, you’re too cute, and as if you weren’t that exact same child once upon a time. Wait, wait, watch this one, I love this one—”

The vine of the beach umbrellas and the guy trying to spear one plays, and Bucky laughs again, this time until he’s almost breathless with it. _Yes, this is an excellent treatment plan, well done, Shuri_. 

By the time her truly excellent selection of the Best of Vine ends, Bucky’s pink-cheeked with mirth.

“Not that I didn’t enjoy that, but, uh, what was that a test for? And what were those anyway?”

“Vines! Short six second videos that had a brief artistic flowering on the internet, before the service shut down.” She sighs, then grins. “Truly, you have so much to learn. Here, I have prepared a syllabus,” she says, and pulls out a tablet for him, which is, in fact, loaded up with a syllabus on Wakandan, world, and pop cultural history.

Bucky takes it with some bemusement. “Thank you. You still didn’t answer my question though.”

“Oh, the elders tell me your spirit needs healing too, not just your body and mind. And laughter is the best medicine, is it not?”

What tension is left in Bucky falls away, his shoulders lowering into an almost-slouch, and he laughs in something like surprise.

“I suppose so. Thank you,” he says again, then he tilts his head at an oddly familiar angle, a small and mischievous smile tugging at his lips. He holds up the tablet and waggles it. “Is there gonna be a test on this?”

She struggles to keep a straight face. “No test, but I expect a one-paragraph response on what your favorite Vine is and why.”

This time, when he laughs, she laughs too.

* * *

Shuri introduces Bucky to Nosipho next, and tries not to radiate smugness too obviously. She’s not successful, apparently; Nosipho raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her, the subtext of which is probably _making the man laugh will not undo decades of trauma, Princess_. Which, whatever, Shuri knows that. She’s still quite proud of making this defrosting experience as unlike HYDRA as possible for Bucky. Before Nosipho can harsh her buzz even more thoroughly, she makes her excuses and leaves them alone together while she makes the rounds of the village. By the time she returns to join them, Bucky seems only slightly overwhelmed, which is probably the best she can hope for.

“So, will the village suit?” she asks him. “If you aren’t comfortable here, only say so, you can stay in the Citadel in the Golden City.”

“Here’s fine. Um, have you told Steve that I’m—” Bucky gestures vaguely at himself, as if to encompass his whole thawed out, un-Winter Soldiered status.

“Defrosted?”

“Yeah.”

“I contacted him when I began the procedure to remove the triggers, and informed him when it was complete. I thought I’d let you call him yourself when you woke up.” She gives him a handful of kimoyo beads. “Here, you can add these to the one on your necklace. Comms, camera, data storage. The comms are completely secure and voice activated, and Captain Rogers’ number is already programmed in. As is mine.”

Bucky looks down at the beads in his hand, then closes his fist around them. “Can you—can you tell him I’m okay, but that we have to make sure the triggers are gone for good? I don’t—if I have to go back into cryo, I don’t want him to—”

“You doubt my work?”

“No! No, just—I have to be sure. Please.”

Nosipho nods at her, so she says, “Alright. Two weeks then?”

“Four.”

“Three,” she counters, and Bucky’s face scrunches up in consideration of this offer.

“Okay, three weeks, but you test the triggers twice that last week.”

“You’re quite the haggler, aren’t you? But fine, deal,” she says, and holds out her hand. They shake on it. She’s pleased to note that Bucky’s handshake is firm and not ostentatiously careful. “And we can get to work on your new arm in the meantime!”

Bucky blinks in surprise. “Oh, um, no thank you.”

“What? What do you mean no thank you?”

He shrugs, and Nosipho gives her a significant eyebrow waggle and a glare. “I’m not ready for that yet, is all.”

Shuri opens her mouth to argue, and Nosipho’s glare intensifies so rapidly that she closes her mouth fast enough to make her teeth clack.

“It’s wise to take some time with any decisions about a prosthetic,” says Nosipho, and Shuri grits her teeth and nods in agreement.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. You can let me know when you are ready, and we can speak further about it then. So! I will see you next week?” He nods. “Any more questions?” He shakes his head. “Then I am off to my lab.”

Bucky stands as she does, and gives her another one of his too-sad, small smiles. “Thank you. Again. I can never thank you enough, really.”

Shuri wants to wave his thanks off, but Nosipho’s giving her a steady look like this is important, so she doesn’t make a joke and she doesn’t shrug Bucky’s thanks off.

Instead she holds Bucky’s direct gaze and says, “You are very welcome. Wakanda is, and _I _am happy to help you, as a gift freely given. Or, I suppose it’s an apology, really, on account of how my brother pretty much ruined your life.”

“Wasn’t much to ruin, if I’m being honest,” says Bucky, now with a sharp and wry grin rather than the sad smile. His face returns to solemnity when he adds, “I’m very sorry for your loss though, Princess.”

Irrational though it is, she would almost prefer if he’d punched her. His sincerity, and the reminder of her bereavement, are far more painful. Still, it’s kind of him to offer condolences.

“Thank you,” she says, and attempts a smile. “I’ll leave you in Nosipho’s capable hands now.”

* * *

She goes straight back to her lab, and contemplates the project files for Bucky’s new prosthetic arm with a sigh. She’d really hoped she would be able to throw herself into that particular project. She had anticipated it being a fascinating challenge, to design something that would hit all the criteria of being minimally invasive and playing nicely with what existed of the neuromuscular connections in Bucky’s shoulder, while still being strong, sensitive, and lightweight.

And the challenge of it aside, she’d liked the idea of it, the simplicity of returning what had been taken from Bucky. He’d lost an arm, and Shuri could give him a new one, one more wrong righted, one more bit of symmetry and justice in the world.

But if Bucky isn’t ready, he’s not ready. Bast knows, he has good reasons to be conflicted about a new arm, and helping Bucky to address that is Nosipho’s problem. Shuri will just set the new prosthetic project aside until Bucky can work on it with her. He deserves to have input on it; it will be his arm, after all.

With building a shiny and new prosthetic arm off the table, Shuri can focus on the latest iterations of the Panther suit, which is the more time-sensitive of her projects anyway. T’Challa had told her that the suit’s integrity did not hold up under frequencies like those used on the mining tracks, which makes sense of course, given the tracks are meant to move volatile, freshly mined vibranium safely. She’d assumed the likelihood of such technology being used against the Black Panther was slim. She’d been wrong, clearly.

There are dangers both inside and outside of Wakanda, and now that Wakanda has revealed itself to the world, those dangers will only grow. What Shuri might have considered an obscure failsafe for an unlikely scenario before, now seems like a gaping security hole, dangerous and deadly. It’s her duty to patch that hole. She’s too late as it is, and while she can’t entirely regret that—T’Challa had after all managed to defeat Killmonger by exploiting this particular weak point—there is no time to spare now. T’Challa is king, and he and Wakanda have enemies. Most pressingly, T’Challa has a trip to the Hague coming up, and Shuri refuses to send him on that trip with a subpar Panther suit.

It’s a difficult problem, given that she’ll have to fix one of vibranium’s few inherent weaknesses. But if she can include a program in the nanites’ code to have them vibrate at a frequency that cancels out the dangerous frequency…she spends an afternoon testing that out. Apparently, sometimes the suit will fall apart even more. She’s onto something though, she knows it, and she has to figure this out. She has to make sure T’Challa is as safe as possible.

Shuri would happily spend all her time working on the Panther suit, and maybe she could even get away with it, if she cites pressing national security concerns. But that would require approval from her brother the king, to say nothing of his attention and fussing over her work. And maybe, like an idiot, he would tell her to stop the work. No, best to avoid all that. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, etc. Once she’s figured this out, she’ll just present him with an upgraded Panther suit and he can yell at her all he wants about how she should have asked him or gotten help or whatever. It won’t matter by then, she’ll have gotten what she wants: her brother as safe as she can make him.

Anyway, being head of the Wakandan Design Group puts other demands on her time, to say nothing of the continued work on the outreach centers, and those are high up on her priority list too. Plus there’s all that pesky if necessary business of keeping herself fed and rested, and the daily kidnappings by the Dora, who spirit her off to the gym or the plains for training and physical exercise.

Honestly, Shuri does not know why so many little girls dream of being a princess. Do they have any idea how much _work_ it is?

There’s one interruption from her excess of work that delights her though: Bucky sends her a message, the one-paragraph explanation of his favorite Vine that she’d jokingly demanded. He’s a charmingly dry writer, and he makes a pretty good case for the flying lawnmower vine he’d picked as his favorite. Though Shuri suspects he’s trolling her, just a little, with his careful over-explanation of the six seconds’ worth of video, complete with a citation to Mariah Carey’s discography. (He helpfully notes though, that even lacking the context for the music, the vine was still funny.) She has to look up what the American grading scale is, but once she does, she sends his message back with an A- scrawled across it, and a gold star.

Before she knows it, a week has passed and it’s time for Bucky’s check up. She sends him a reminder the night before, asking him to come to her lab the next day. She can’t spare the time for a trip out to the border, not when she’d inevitably get caught up in a long lunch with the villagers and a chat with Nosipho. She looks out at the six prototype suits arrayed in her lab, and the twenty small piles of nanites spread out across her work bench, all waiting for more tweaks and tests. No, she absolutely does not have time for a trip. Bucky will have to come to her.

* * *

Shuri’s beaming a stream of sonic energy at the sand table to test the vibration patterns when a low, soft voice behind her says, “Princess?”

She squeaks and whirls around in surprise, because Bast’s kittens, she’s _sure_ she had not heard anyone behind her. Her surprise surprises Bucky, who flinches and jumps back a little, and then they’re both jumping, like both of them are surprised red pandas or something.

“Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to—sorry, if this is a bad time, I’ll come back later—” says Bucky, already taking a couple steps back.

“No, it’s fine! It’s fine, I just lost track of time. Come, let’s make sure your brain is still fixed.”

Bucky nods, and his eyes dart around the lab space as he tries to take it all in. Honestly, his reaction leaves a little something to be desired, in Shuri’s opinion. Her lab is _great_, her lab is _amazing_, and visitors really ought to recognize that.

“So, this is my lab! The pinnacle of Wakandan technological advancement!”

Bucky nods, but he doesn’t say anything. Is it too much to expect a bit of wide-eyed awe, maybe a _wow_ or an _amazing_? If Shuri’s going to be letting random sad white men roam around her lab, she at least wants them to be properly appreciative. Instead, she’s pretty sure Bucky’s just scoping out exit routes.

“We’re basically on top of the mine where most of Wakanda’s vibranium comes from. Nearly all of the mining process is automated, and we use mag lev mine carts that have been carefully engineered to—” She stops herself. Bucky’s still evaluating the lab with the kind of tense wariness she associates with people in horror movies who are about to be eaten by some monster. “You don’t care.”

He whirls and faces her with wide eyes. “No, I mean, yes—I’m listening. Sorry. Mag lev, like the trains in the city?”

He’s making an effort, but he’s still looking everywhere but her, and he’s looking at all of it like there’s a monster hiding somewhere. _Rude and uncalled for_. Though now that she looks at him...he’s holding himself stiffly, so maybe he’s not feeling well. Shuri makes a note to ask him about that, to make sure he’s not hurt, and _hurt_, that’s it. A secondhand memory flashes in her head: HYDRA’s labs, and how often Bucky had been hurt in them. She squeezes her eyes closed. She thought she’d spent more than enough time with Bucky’s worst memories as she hunted out the trigger words, but clearly she hadn’t if she can so easily forget about them now, if she can forget their impact.

_You are not a thoughtless child, Shuri, do better._

It’s _Shuri_ whose favorite place is her laboratory, what with it being the location of so many of her happiest memories and greatest achievements. Bucky, on the other hand…nothing good has ever happened to Bucky in a lab. What was Shuri thinking, asking him to come here. She’d had him woken from cryo in the Border village for a reason.

Nothing for it but to finish this up quickly then.

“You can look around,” she tells Bucky. Maybe examining the space will make him more comfortable. Bast knows he’s not going to see anything more alarming than the mold growing on forgotten cups of tea and coffee. “Just give me a moment to gather what I need.”

She watches out of the corner of her eye as he skirts nervously around anything that might be lab equipment, though he does stop to peer more closely at the sand table, before his attention is arrested by one of the murals taking up the walls of her lab. Only then does most of the tension leave his shoulders. Ha, a win for the powers of art and interior design over evil science Nazis.

“You like art?” she asks once she’s fetched her scanner beads.

He shrugs a diffident shoulder, and doesn’t quite answer. “Never been in a lab like this,” he says softly, still looking at the brightly colored mural.

“I should hope not. But I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—I should have come to you in the village, I wasn’t even thinking about your, you know, terrible trauma.”

He turns to look at her, one sardonic eyebrow raised. “Which specific terrible trauma do you mean?” he says, and Shuri stifles an inappropriate laugh, half out of relief that he hasn’t taken her words amiss, and half from Bucky’s grim humor.

“I mean, you haven’t had the best experiences in labs. We can do this elsewhere if—”

“No, it’s alright. Like I said, never been in a lab like this. HYDRA wasn’t big on art in their evil underground lairs,” he says with a small smile, gesturing towards the murals.

There’s still some tension and stiffness in the lines of his shoulders though. Well, if he says it’s alright, it’s alright. Shuri’s not about to handhold him through proper communication. She hasn’t got the time. She points him towards the nearest stool.

“Sit there, and try to stay still for a moment.”

She needn’t have told him to try, apparently. As soon as he sits down, he achieves a stillness so total she can scarcely see him breathing. Well that is certainly a creepy sniper assassin skill. She knows better than to say so and just begins the scan. It finishes in less than a minute, and she takes a look at the resulting brain images and neural map, which look just as they should, thankfully: synapses in good order, damage from electroshock healing steadily.

“All good,” she declares, and smiles at Bucky. “Ready to try the words?”

“The guards, they should—”

The two Dora Milaje on shift step forwards, expressions impassive. Bucky hesitates, assessing them and the surrounding lab. She can practically see him wondering if the Dora can take him out, and considering all the potential weapons the Winter Soldier could use against them. Wisely, he does not wonder out loud; instead he just stands, and moves out of reach of the stool, into a clear space in the center of the lab where no possible weapons are within arm's reach.

“You should move further away too, Princess,” he says.

Shuri sighs gustily, but she duly moves well out of range, and Ayo steps between her and Bucky.

“Really, guards aren’t even necessary, but whatever makes you feel better,” Shuri says, then she recites the ten words.

She carefully does not think of the memories that had been anchored to the trigger words, nor of how many tears she’d wept over them, and just watches Bucky closely instead. When she says the last word, he’s fine, of course, still wholly present and wholly himself. Pale and shaky, but fine.

“Ready to comply?”

“No,” he says, slumping in relief. The Dora return to their at ease positions, and Shuri smiles cheerfully at Bucky.

“See! All is well! The trigger words are almost certainly gone for good. You should really call Captain Rogers and tell him so.”

“Not yet,” insists Bucky. “Two more weeks, and three more tests. Then I’ll call.”

“Ugh, fine, but if he asks me or T’Challa why we did not tell him you were awake and well right away, we’re throwing you under the bus of Captain America’s I’m-disappointed-in-you face. Now, you’re holding your shoulder weird, tell me why, please.”

“Oh, um, it’s nothing. Just—the port, or inside it, maybe—it feels kind of weird, I guess. It’s probably just phantom pain, it’s fine.”

Shuri frowns and beckons him closer. “May I?” she asks, gesturing at the bright blue shawl wrapped over the stump of Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky nods. She unwraps it, and takes off the protective cap placed over the attachment port. There’s nothing visibly wrong; they’d long since cleaned up the mess of what was left of Bucky’s previous prosthetic. She runs a scan, and hisses unhappily at the results that are projected above them.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s interesting, actually, I did not think this would happen…” She swipes through assorted scans, then enhances one that shows where metal meets muscle and bone. Bucky’s nerves and the biomechanical connectors to Bucky’s previous prosthetic are making a concerted effort at self-repair. Left unchecked, they’ll start firing off even more useless pain signals than they likely already are as they try to heal damage they cannot fix. “...but you must be far more uncomfortable than just feeling weird, Mr. Stoic. The severed connections to your old prosthetic are trying their damndest to fix themselves and hook up with what’s left of your nerves up here. I thought we’d deactivated or removed all of this already…”

“Can you fix it? Or—do I need surgery?”

“No surgery,” says Shuri, and throws the scan over to her workspace. “Or nothing you’d consider surgery, at any rate. We can do better here in Wakanda, and we can especially do better here in my lab. I will have to program the nanites, but once I have, all that’s necessary is to send them in, let them do their work, and then clear them back out again.”

She pulls up Bucky’s files and starts building the nanite treatment as she speaks. She’ll be able to adapt existing treatment plans so it shouldn’t take long, thankfully...

“It can wait, if you’re busy. I’m not—this isn’t an emergency.”

Shuri may be busy, but she treats that as the dumb comment it is.

“Maybe not, but you’re in pain, aren’t you? That pushes you up my priority list. Sit, old man! I will have this done shortly, then you can go.”

“Right here?” asks Bucky, indicating the stool.

“Sure, or you can get a proper chair. You won’t be sedated or anything, the nanites will do their work without you noticing. I will just need you to come back once a day for a week or so, so I can make sure your nerves and these old connections stop trying to tangle up with each other, and make any necessary adjustments to the nanites’ programming.”

It’s yet another thing to toss on to her to-do pile, but this too is her duty. She’ll make the time. Bucky must have been expecting worse, because he blinks in bemusement and stops looking quite so wary.

“Huh. That’s really amazing. Can you—can you show me how it works?”

“Of course!”

Though she goes fast, working all the while, Bucky seems to follow her well enough, better than she would have expected even. When she says so, he smiles at her, equal parts wry and pleased.

“You gave me a syllabus, didn’t you? I got started on it already, is all.”

“Teacher’s pet,” she teases as she injects the nanites. “There. You shouldn’t feel anything as these work. I hadn’t planned to do some of this until—or if—you were ready for a new prosthetic, but best to do it now, given how this old HYDRA tech is making a nuisance of itself.” She falters then, remembering just how that HYDRA tech had been installed. She has to be careful, thoughtful. Bucky is a person, not a project, and Shuri must do no harm with the responsibility she has been given. “If that’s alright that is. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”

He studies her at that, his stare cool and unreadable for a long moment before his expression warms into a smile. “It’s alright. Can you just tell me what they’re doing, exactly? The nanites?”

“Of course! They’re turning off and cutting off any remaining connections between your nerves and the biomechanical attachment points. Once the connections are deactivated, the nanites will work on the existing biomechanical interface and, well, reconstruct it, effectively. Bit by bit, on a very small scale.”

She has the computer play a simulation of the process, and _finally_, there it is. Some proper wonder on Bucky’s face.

“Nanosurgery,” she explains. “It’s perfect for this sort of delicate, non-life threatening work. Usually, we use it to knit broken bones back together, or remove small tumors.”

Bucky grins, fast and fleeting, and Shuri’s reminded of the trigger word: _seventeen_. “And you’ve got flying cars too,” he murmurs, as if to himself. “What happens when the nanites are done? How do they, uh, get back out?”

“Oh, you sneeze them back out. Like, just, multiple enormous sneezes.”

She gives Bucky her best professional scientist look, and he narrows his eyes at her. “Bullshit.”

“Nope, it’s true! Sneezes! It’s kind of gross, actually, sorry, they come back out in this grey goo—”

Bucky stops looking suspicious so abruptly that Shuri stops talking and gives him her own narrow-eyed look of suspicion. “So, should I like, save all my snotty handkerchiefs for you, or—”

Okay, yes, she’d walked into that one. “No! Absolutely not! Ugh, fine, ruin my fun why don’t you. I don’t get so many credulous foreigners to troll, you could play along a little more. No, you don’t sneeze them out. I just send a little signal, and when I draw a small blood sample, they all come back out. After that, when—if—you choose, we will be able to just—plug in a new prosthetic, so to speak.”

“Right,” he says with a small laugh. “Just…plug it in. Of course.”

“Well, there will be tests, and adjustments, but…yeah,” she says, shrugging. “Mostly, we’ll just plug it in.”

“You sure I wasn’t in cryo for a couple thousand years, instead of a few months?”

“Ha! It’s still the 21st century, old man. You just have to catch up.”

“Guess so,” he says.

Shuri takes a look at the time and tries not to grimace. Bucky notices anyway. Because she can be _professional_ and _responsible_ with her charge, she focuses her attention back on him.

“Is there anything else, any other symptoms that are bothering you? Pain, memory problems, trouble speaking or sleeping…?”

“No, nothing. I won’t take up any more of your time, Princess. Thank you, again.”

She waves off his thanks, and returns to her sand table. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bucky watching her as he stands to leave.

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll check on the nanites’ progress,” she tells him.

He hesitates, as if about to say something, but it must not be important because he murmurs a goodbye and leaves.

* * *

She doesn’t begrudge the time spent helping Bucky, especially since he’d been in pain, little as he’d shown it. It does mean she’s behind on the rest of her work though, so she stays late at the lab, late enough that she doesn’t bother heading back to the Citadel for a few hours of sleep. She has a cot here in the lab for just this purpose; her mother and the Dora do not approve of that, but whatever. It’s efficient. And if no one will okay her plan to build herself an apartment just above the labs, well then, they shouldn’t complain about her lab-adjacent bedroom.

And anyway, she has a morning meeting with the Wakandan Design Group project leads, far more convenient to just stay here until then.

The meeting takes up most of her morning, and then it’s back to the Panther suits. She still hasn’t solved the problem of the suit falling apart under certain sustained frequencies, but she’s certain she can come up with a countermeasure. Maybe not built into the suit though…?

“Princess? I’m, uh, here for another checkup?”

Shuri squeaks, flails, and whirls around to see Bucky lurking in the hallway leading into her main lab space. “Can someone _please_ warn me before the Eldest Assassin here sneaks up on me?? Also, I have basically been inside your brain, you can call me Shuri.”

“Okay,” says Bucky, before turning to Ayo who’s on guard today. “Is that gonna brand me as an unforgivably rude foreigner?” he asks her.

Ayo’s stern expression shifts into a bare millimeter’s worth of a smile. “No, it will not. We know our princess.”

“She means that everyone knows I’m the one who’s lacking in appropriate manners. Come, come, let’s get a look at you, are you still in pain today?”

“It’s not pain, I told you. Or not bad, anyway. And it’s better today. More like an itch.”

He barely flinches when she starts up a scan, just stands obediently still. Once it’s finished, Shuri pulls up the scan and data from the nanites, and is encouraged by what they show.

“There, see? Already, massive improvement. Let the nanites keep working slowly, and they’ll continue clearing out what’s left of the attachments without your overclocked immune system pitching a fit. Come back tomorrow and we’ll check again.”

Shuri swipes the scans out of sight, and returns to her workstation where models of the Black Panther suit are waiting, each with a different failsafe option for counteracting damaging frequencies. Maybe if the failsafe isn’t in the suit itself but in a separate device…?

“Um, is that all?”

“Yes! See you tomorrow!”

* * *

“Shuri?”

The voice is way too close to her ear. She maybe shrieks, and she definitely throws a wild elbow behind her. She hears a grunt, and when she whirls around ready to punch, she sees a slightly winded looking Bucky.

“Princess, I did warn you,” calls out Ayo over the thump of music.

“And I said hi,” says Bucky, and okay, wow, the big, wounded blue eyes nonsense he’s throwing her way is frankly unnecessary. Now Shuri feels like she’s just stepped on a puppy’s tail, never mind that her own elbow is actually throbbing a little from its brief contact with Bucky’s ridiculous super soldier abs.

“Music off!” She narrows her eyes at Bucky. “What are you—oh, it’s tomorrow already, isn’t it.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up, and he gives her a quick look up and down. “You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” he notes. “Have you…not gone home?”

“I have a cot here, it’s fine! Sit, sit, let’s check on those nanites.”

“Have you slept at all?” asks Bucky as he sits for the scan.

“I just said I have a cot here, didn’t I?”

“You also just seemed surprised that it was ‘tomorrow’ already.”

“Whatever, I am a very busy woman. Still no pain or discomfort? No stoic nonsense now, tell me if so. Pain means something is going wrong.”

“No pain,” he reports. She pulls up his scans, and ignores how he’s not looking at them. Instead, he’s looking at her, brow furrowed in consternation.

She looks at the scans and the nanites’ data: all is going just as it should.

“Give it one more day. Come back tomorrow, preferably in the morning. I don’t want those nanites to overstay their welcome and provoke an immune response when your T cells catch onto them.”

“Alright, tomorrow morning,” he says. “Thank you.”

She’s already returned to her workspace with its many iterations of the Panther suit. By now she’s given up on the idea of a failsafe that’s not built into the suit, and has moved on to trying to work one in that functions alongside the force redistribution system. She’s so close to a solution, she can feel it.

“You’ve been working on the suits every time I’ve been here. Orders from the king?”

“You’re still here?” she asks, and doesn’t look up from her work.

“I can go if—”

“No, it’s fine,” she says, already thinking. She looks up and eyes Bucky, who’s still perched on a stool, watching her. He can still punch with one hand, and he _is_ superpowered. He could help her test the force redistribution system. “And no, my brother the king has not ordered it.”

“So why are you working on the suits? Seems like they work pretty well. At least in my up close and personal experience.”

“Hmm, well, we had some recent…troubles that demonstrated some dangerous weaknesses.”

“The thing with your cousin, the usurper,” says Bucky with a nod.

“Yes, our brief civil war made some of the deficiencies in the Panther suit evident. So I am fixing them.”

“T’Challa won though,” notes Bucky. “So the, uh, deficiencies can’t have been that bad, right?”

“They were bad enough, so they have to be fixed,” says Shuri. “I will not do too little, too late this time. Do you want to help me test the fixes?”

“What would I have to do?”

“Nothing difficult!” She points to the dozen or so samples waiting to be tested, the fabric of the suits stretched out into squares and hanging on wire frames. “I just need you to punch each of those for me while I take readings and test out my force redistribution systems.”

Bucky approaches the samples and examines them. “The suit absorbs force, just like Steve’s shield. I remember that. It’s the vibranium, right?”

“Yes, and the vibranium nanites that make up the suit can store that force and release it again. That’s not the issue though. The issue is that under certain frequencies, the suit loses coherence, the nanites fall apart. What I’m trying to do is find a way to counter that. I think I have a solution in rerouting the force redistribution system to act as a failsafe against such frequencies, I just need someone to provide the force so I can test it.”

She could ask the Dora, of course, but if she’s got a super soldier right here, she’d prefer to use his super strength. It will be a better test of the suit’s capabilities.

“And what about these?” asks Bucky, moving to examine the mannequins draped in jackets.

“I would like to integrate a reactive, defensive force field into normal clothing,” she says.

This is where she’s truly doing too little, too late. She can’t save Baba with this now, hadn’t even known such a thing was necessary mere months ago. She has worked so hard not to be seen as a child in the eyes of her family and her people, and yet, like a child, she had trusted her father’s safety in the world, had assumed that no one could hurt her Baba, or her big brother the Black Panther. She had let Baba and T’Challa go with nothing more than hugs and kisses on the cheek, when she should have given them all the protection her intellect could devise. And her intellect is considerable.

Failure is a harsh teacher, but it’s an effective one. She will not fail again.

“You need someone to help test that too?” asks Bucky, and it is almost annoying how soft-spoken he is, how careful.

“I barely even have a prototype yet. It’s just a concept, so far.”

“It’s a good one,” he says, then circles back around to the Panther suit samples. “So, what do you need me to do?” 

* * *

_I really am a genius_, thinks Shuri as she watches Bucky jab at one of the suit samples. Sure, none of the samples have quite worked out yet, but having Bucky’s help is saving her so much time, and thanks to his unfamiliarity with Wakandan technology and her work, he’s providing a valuable perspective that’s shaking up Shuri’s way of looking at the problem in just the right way. Maybe she should mandate a new policy for the Wakandan Design Group: anyone stuck on a project must recruit a random foreigner and answer all of their dumb questions about said project. Problem solving insight is practically guaranteed. There will be a supply issue, obviously, what with Wakanda currently having a grand total of one foreigner, but maybe if they use the outreach centers. She makes a note of it and returns her attention to the suit samples.

“Alright, one more punch, please, let’s see if storing the energy longer makes a difference…”

An alert chimes, not one of Shuri’s. “Sorry, that’s me,” says Bucky. “I’m supposed to eat something every two hours, do you mind if—?”

“Oh, sure, go ahead. There’s food in the kitchen, down the hall and to your left.”

Shuri stays at her workspace, fiddling with the structure of the nanites. Maybe if she tried a different crystalline-inspired structure…? Bucky pops his head back into the lab, a sheepish half-smile on his face.

“Uh, so, I have no idea how anything works in that kitchen. Or if it even was the kitchen. I don’t wanna accidentally ruin some experiment or something. Could you—?”

“Sometimes I forget you’re from another century,” says Shuri. “Fine, let me show you the wonders of modern life.”

She directs him to the kitchen, which is very obviously a kitchen to Shuri’s eye, but she supposes she can’t entirely fault Bucky for being cautious in a lab, given his prior experiences. She shows him where the food is kept: fresh fruit and ready-made meals in the cooled cabinets, and shelf-stable energy bars in the drawers. Her own stomach rumbles at the sight of the food. Had she skipped breakfast? Maybe. She’s late for lunch too, so she might as well work through until dinner.

“I’ve got this hot plate kind of thing in my hut, but I don’t see one here. How do I warm the food up?”

Shuri taps on another cabinet, and the previously opaque surface clears. “We use microwaves here too, you know. Stick it in here.”

“Right. Thanks,” he says. He grabs a meal from the cabinet and sets it inside the microwave. She grins when he jumps a little as the microwave hums to life the moment he shuts its door.

“No food in the actual lab,” she tells him, then turns to go.

“You’re not hungry?” he asks.

Already the spicy and savory scent of the stew Bucky’s heating up wafts into the kitchen. Her stomach growls again. The voice of her mother stirs in the back of her head: _you would leave a guest to eat alone? And when he is helping you too?_ Ugh. The imaginary voice of her mother is right.

She turns back, and takes a meal from the cabinet for herself. “I suppose I can join you,” she says, and Bucky smiles at her.

They both eat quickly, at least, and then it’s back to the lab for a few more hours of punching and experimenting, punctuated by snack breaks for Bucky and caffeine breaks for Shuri. When she has more than enough data on force absorption, she shoos Bucky out of the lab.

“Alright, your work here is done! Thank you for your contributions to science!”

“You’re not leaving too?”

“Why would I leave?”

“It’s getting kinda late. And you were here late last night too, so...”

“The work of science is never done! It’s fine, I’ll review just one more dataset. You go, you still need plenty of sleep for your healing brain.”

“Okay, but I’m pretty sure you need plenty of sleep for your _growing_ brain.”

Unfortunately, science backs Bucky up on that claim. “I will not stay up late,” she promises. “I’ll even have dinner!”

“Uh huh,” says Bucky, squinting dubiously at her. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

Shuri dives back into her data and waves in his general direction. “Bye!”

* * *

Shuri’s vaguely aware of the Dora Milaje’s shift changing, of messages arriving on her kimoyo bracelet, and of Nareema leaving food for her. She glances quickly at the messages: no emergencies, so they can wait. She goes back to work.

Sometime later—it doesn’t feel that long, but her hands are cramping from all the typing so maybe longer than she’d thought—Nareema ventures, “Princess, it is past midnight. Perhaps a break is in order?”

“I think I’m close to a breakthrough,” mutters Shuri, keeping her eyes on her screens. “Just another hour…”

Nareema sighs. “Very well.”

She’s close, she’s sure of it, each new test and algorithm like a path in a maze where the next turning will surely deliver her the solution to the problem, or if not the solution itself, the right new kind of arrangement of the nanite lattice to try…a half-formed idea sparks in her mind, and Shuri grasps at it. _Yes, _she almost has it…

When the numbers and diagrams on her screens grow blurry, Shuri tells herself she’ll just take a quick nap, then she’ll have the answer. She shuffles and stumbles to her cot, and she’s asleep before she can even get a blanket over herself.

The sound of voices drifting in from the lab wakes her up.

“She’s still asleep, she was up until dawn, you’ll have to come back—”

“I’m awake!” calls out Shuri, or tries to. She has to wrestle back a few of her braids from where they’re covering her mouth, and then she has to disentangle herself from the twisted up sheets, until she’s free enough to yell, “I’m up, I’m here!”

She’s still getting her braids into some semblance of order as she walks out to see who’s asking after her.

Bucky is waiting for her in the lab, along with Ayo. Shit, of course, Bucky was due to have the nanites out today. He takes one look at her and frowns.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I can come back later, or tomorrow—”

“Nonsense, I’m up, I should have been up hours ago. And we ought to do this now, I won’t risk you having a dangerous immune response to those nanites.”

“Alright,” says Bucky, still frowning. “But how about we have breakfast first?”

Shuri glances at her watch; ugh, it’s 10:34 am, that’s practically 11 am, which might as well be lunch time.

“It’s too late for breakfast. Just come here, let me do a scan—”

“Brunch, then,” says Bucky, and takes a pack from his shoulder as he walks towards the kitchen. “Nosipho baked these rolls and asked me to bring them to you, we can split them.”

Nosipho’s sweet rolls _are _really, really good. “Fine. Just one cup of tea and a roll though!”

When they get to the kitchen, she’s gently overruled: Ayo sets out a bowl of cut fruit, and Bucky asks about _that sweet porridge, with the nuts_ and soon enough they’re having a full spread. Shuri eats three rolls, a banana, and a bowl of porridge before she feels full enough to stop. She supposes she must have skipped dinner at some point last night.

“Alright, _now _can we deal with your nanites?”

“Sure. Thanks for sharing brunch with me,” says Bucky, polite enough to earn a somewhat approving glance from Ayo.

“Pretty manners, for a foreigner,” murmurs Ayo in Xhosa on their way back to the lab.

The last scan of Bucky’s prosthetic attachment port shows an all-clear, though when she unwraps the scarf covering it, Shuri does see the beginnings of inflammation in the scars around his shoulder, and an uptick in T-cells in the blood around the area. The nanites are clearly coming out just in time. Shuri fetches a syringe.

“Your body is beginning to reject them, let’s get those nanites out before the immune response causes you more discomfort.” Bucky offers his arm for the needle, his veins nice and visible under his pale skin, and Shuri pauses. “You don’t have any needle-related trauma do you?”

Bucky’s lips twitch into a grim little smile. “Well, yeah, but it’s pretty low on the list. It’s fine.”

“Right. Well, tell me if you need me to stop.”

She toggles the commands to call the nanites back into the syringe, waits a minute to give them time to get to Bucky’s right arm, then takes a blood draw. When she withdraws the needle, the small mark clots and fades almost before she can blot at it with a cotton swab.

“Done?” asks Bucky.

“Let me do one more scan to make sure…and yes, done! You are all set. Though wait, you should have some salve for your shoulder, I want to make sure that inflammation goes down.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine, you don’t have to—”

“Sit! I will put it on for you.”

“I know you’ve got other projects—”

“I said _sit_.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Shuri may be impatient to get back to her Panther suit project, but she won’t stint on Bucky’s care. She takes all of her responsibilities seriously, but her responsibility to Bucky is one she’s especially careful with. She knows, after all, in terrible detail, all the ways in which people have failed him and hurt him and violated him, and Shuri will not add to that weight of cruelty, not ever.

She smooths the salve over the scarring lightly. Judging by the way tension in Bucky’s shoulder eases out, he’d really needed the salve. She makes a disapproving tsking noise.

“You really must tell me, or Nosipho, when you’re in pain, Bucky.”

“I don’t always notice ’til it’s gone,” he murmurs, and Shuri’s throat goes tight.

“Well, there. That should help. Take the rest with you and apply more this evening.”

He thanks her and wraps his scarf back up over his shoulder carefully, and Shuri heads back to her workstation.

“Need any more help today?” Bucky asks.

Her workstation is a _mess_. She has no one to blame but herself, of course—the perils of late night science, but it makes it hard to pick up where she’d left off.

“No, I think I’ve gotten close to a breakthrough, actually—” says Shuri, but then she looks at her data and notes. “Oh no. _No_.”

“What, what is it?”

She swipes through it all frantically, thinking something must have corrupted the system, because these numbers and models don’t make _sense_, but she could have _sworn_ she’d gotten close to a solution, she knows she’d been so close to figuring out the failsafe force redistribution issues… Then she looks at the timestamps on her work. Everything had been going well until around four AM. After that, her work turned into near gibberish, the breakthrough she’d been so sure of a literal impossibility according to all known laws of physics. Electromagnetism does _not_ work like that, and she can’t believe her 4 AM self thought it could.

How could she have been so _stupid_? She shouldn’t have made an error like this when she was _seven _let alone _seventeen_. Shuri dumps all the work from late last night/early this morning into her trash file, then slams her palms onto her workstation in frustration. She _cannot _take forever to figure this out, she _can’t_.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” asks Bucky.

“I’m an _idiot_ is what’s wrong,” she all but shouts, and Bucky tenses up and flinches away, clearly taken aback. “Sorry, sorry. I just—I thought I’d gotten close to figuring this out, but it was all _nonsense_. Hours worth of work, and all of it was entirely _useless_.”

To her horror, tears are streaming unbidden from her eyes, and she’s abruptly _furious_: at her dumb eyes for deciding now’s the time to cry, at herself, at this stupid problem that she just can’t fix.

“Don’t think that makes you an idiot, it just means you need some rest,” says Bucky. He steps closer again and hands her a handkerchief.

Where did he even get a handkerchief _from_, she wonders, as she angrily wipes at her eyes with it.

“I don’t have _time _to rest,” she snaps.

She flings her schedule up on her main workstation screen: Wakandan Design Group meetings, Council meetings, training with the Dora, lectures and seminars at the University, and, most pressing of all, T’Challa’s upcoming trip to the Hague for the trial of Zemo. Shuri _has _to figure out this force redistribution problem by then. She can’t let T’Challa leave Wakanda with such a gaping vulnerability in the Panther suit. It would be like sending him out with a target painted all over him.

“See? There’s just so much to do, and it’s _all _important, and since I can’t invent more hours in the day, I can’t rest more, I _can’t_.”

Bucky nods agreeably. “Yeah, I figure genius scientist princesses have a lot on their plates. But if you don’t rest, then you end up with work that doesn’t make sense, so seems to me like taking a break now and again to sleep is pretty important.”

“I _did _take a break, I slept a whole _five hours_.”

“I believe you slept three hours the night before last. And four the night before that,” says Ayo, the snitch.

“And I am _fine_,” she insists, but Ayo isn’t convinced.

“Princess, your project can wait a couple of days for you to attend to your own needs, or you can work on it once some of these other pressing responsibilities pass. Take a day or two off—”

“An entire _day_? _Two_ days?” Shuri laughs, then forcibly stops herself when she feels her laughter edging dangerously close to sobbing like an overwrought toddler. “Absolutely not. T’Challa is leaving for the Hague _next week_, I _have_ to fix this by then.”

“I kinda doubt your brother wants you to work yourself into the ground,” Bucky says. “If you tell him you need a little longer, he’ll understand.”

“I’m not doing this because he asked me to do it, I’m doing it because I _have to_. To keep him safe. T’Challa _died_. He did not stay that way, and I know it was part of the challenge so I couldn’t do anything anyway, but—Baba died too. When he was supposed to be _safe_, and I didn’t even _try_—Even the usurper died when he was wearing one of _my_ Panther suits! I can do better. I must.” Her voice shakes, and more tears spill, which is unbecoming of a princess and a scientist. She takes in a deep breath, and opens up her Panther suit files again. “So thank you, but I will keep working until I patch this vulnerability.”

She keeps her eyes on her work, but even so, she can sense the concerned and pitying looks from Ayo and Bucky.

“Shuri…what happened to your dad is not your fault,” says Bucky, too gentle.

“I _know _that. Zemo killed my father, I _know_. But I could have—I should have protected him better, given him some sort of armor or shielding—

Ayo sighs and puts an arm around her shoulders. “Protecting your father was the Dora Milaje’s duty, Shuri, and we failed. We could not protect him from the explosion. I understand the might-have-beens that are consuming you, they consumed us too. But we are only human, and there was nothing more we could have done.”

“We can do better now,” Shuri insists. “_I_ will do better this time. I can make sure T’Challa is safe, when he leaves, I know I can. I can fix this.”

“You can’t protect him from everything, kid,” says Bucky softly. “There’s no such thing as perfectly safe, unless you count being dead.”

“That does not mean I shouldn’t _try_.”

“No, course not, but you shouldn’t hurt yourself trying. I guarantee you your brother doesn’t want you running yourself ragged for his sake. He’s the Black Panther, right? You have to trust that he and the Dora Milaje can keep him safe.”

“I don’t see how I possibly can, given recent events.” Shuri winces, then throws an apologetic glance at Ayo’s stony face. “No offense intended, I know the Dora did everything they could.”

“I will not lie to you, Princess, there are new dangers now that Wakanda has revealed itself to the world. But I know that the King and my sisters are equal to them. Do you think we have been idle since we lost your father? We have trained, we have readied ourselves for these new dangers,” says Ayo.

“Well I’m readying T’Challa for new dangers too by patching this vulnerability. Klaue is dead, but people _saw _what he did in Busan, there is _footage_. Other people can figure it out.”

“You’re right,” says Bucky, to her surprise. For a moment, the kind concern that turned his face soft and gentle is replaced with cool, dispassionate assessment, his eyes going unfocused and distant. The legacy of the Winter Soldier, maybe, or even just Sergeant Barnes, dangerous in his own right. “There’s a lot of dangerous tech floating around out there, and Klaue was an arms dealer, he might’ve sold some of his vibranium disrupting weapons to other people.”

Shuri throws her arms up, relieved that Bucky gets it.

“Yes, thank you! I’m not being paranoid for no reason!” cries Shuri, though the way Bucky had just laid it out is making her hands twitch with the urgent need to get back to her work.

All the ice melts from Bucky’s expression and his eyes are back to their usual soft, sad blue.

“You’re not,” he affirms. “But who says you’ve gotta do all this work alone? Who says it’s just up to you?”

The words _because I’m the only one who can _rise up in her head and almost exit her mouth before her higher brain function stops them for being insufferable in the extreme. She frowns, and considers other answers: the newly designed Panther suit is her project, this is her duty as head of the Wakandan Design Group…before she can answer, Bucky continues.

“Nosipho keeps telling me this is a community, that no one goes it alone. Doesn’t that include you too?”

“Nosipho must be thrilled to have such a good student,” mutters Shuri, because she doesn’t have any other comeback. She can’t look Bucky in the overly-earnest eye and tell him _no, princesses don’t count_.

“I’ve always been a teacher’s pet,” says Bucky dryly, and earns a rare snort of suppressed laughter from Ayo. “Listen, how about you tell T’Challa about this thing with the Panther suits. He oughta know, and maybe he can even help.”

It’s not the _worst_ idea. Before he’d let Shuri take over the project, T’Challa had designed his own Panther suit when he took on the mantle of Black Panther. No one else knows the ins and outs of the suit better than the two of them.

“Maybe,” allows Shuri. “He’s very busy though—”

“I’ve already sent him a message, he says today’s meeting with the Jabari has been rescheduled due to bad weather in the mountains, so he has the afternoon free,” says Ayo. “He will expect you in his own lab at the Citadel after lunch.”

Shuri’s feeling distinctly _managed, _but it’s all coming together so conveniently, and she’s too tired to protest.

“Fine,” she says, and earns a smile from Bucky. “Though I would like it noted that I think you fuss too much. My actual brother does not fuss over me nearly as much.”

Shuri makes certain to annoy T’Challa the exact right amount so that he won’t, actually. She has slacked on that front with Bucky, clearly, on account of how he’s healing and sad, but once he’s feeling better she’ll have to make up for it.

“Yeah, well, I’m fussing exactly as much as I do—” Bucky stops, as if he’s lost his breath, then continues shakily, “As I used to—over my sisters.”

Who are dead, or who he has no hope of seeing again, at least not as the little sisters he’d left behind. At least Shuri only _almost _lost her brother. Bucky has very definitely lost his sisters, and maybe he’s only truly realizing it now that Shuri has restored more of his memories to him. He looks as if he’s just been gutted by grief, like he’s just taken a mortal blow he hadn’t even seen coming. Before she can say anything to him—what, she’s not sure, but _something, _anything—he hides away all that pain and smiles at her again, and it’s too sad to bear.

“Anyway, I’m due to see Nosipho,” he says, already on his way out of the lab. “I’ll see you next week.”

* * *

Whether she’s being managed or not, Shuri won’t say no to a quick consultation with her brother, so she gathers together her data and the samples of the nanite fabric, sends the project files over to T’Challa’s kimoyo, then goes to meet him in his lab in the Citadel. It’s more of a workspace than a lab in truth; T’Challa doesn’t have the time to do the sort of design and research that Shuri does with the Wakandan Design Group. He still tinkers some though, so he keeps a small lab/workspace in the Citadel, with a couple of sand tables and a fabrication unit capable of making whatever prototypes he designs. 

She grabs a quick lunch to go from the palace kitchen, and arrives early to T’Challa’s lab to set up her project files. The lab space is almost dusty from disuse, but the systems of the palace AI, Griot, are as responsive as ever, and it’s the work of a couple of minutes to get everything set up for T’Challa’s review. By the time T’Challa arrives, Shuri is already using the sand table to model different nanite lattices for the suit.

“I know this is about the suit’s nanite integrity failure under certain sustained frequencies, but I haven’t had a chance to review your files in any real detail yet,” says T’Challa. “Give me some time to go over them?”

“Sure,” she tells him. “Don’t rush on my account.”

Not that T’Challa looks harried or rushed, but then he rarely does. He’s inherited—or learned—their mother’s trick of serene unflappability, of being the seemingly still center of a system in chaos. Shuri’s always one of the bodies in motion, on wild elliptical orbits that have her swinging now close, then slingshotting far, then close again. Her own metaphor doesn’t entirely hold up, or maybe it holds up too well, for even the center of gravity moves, just as fast as the bodies that orbit it. Its seeming stillness is only relative. Which she supposes means that T’Challa works hard to be so steady, and that just like her, he’s always in motion.

Shuri sighs, and keeps modeling and discarding a dozen other lattice structures for the nanite fabric of the suit, until T’Challa is finished with his review of her files.

“You’re on the right path for a solution, I can tell. This is an excellent middle step to solving a difficult problem.”

_Middle step_ is better than the dreaded _this is a good start_.

“I know the solution is in getting the right pattern for the nanites to hold in order to maintain suit integrity even as they disrupt any disruption, but I just can’t get it right.”

She lifts up another model lattice in the sand table, runs the disrupter simulation, and watches the lattice vibrate, then collapse. T’Challa joins her at the sand table and tries a few lattices of his own, arranging the nanite model into complex polyhedrons. Somehow, that makes Shuri tear up. She can’t even blame the frustration of not solving the problem. No, her tears are because she is sharing a sand table with her brother again. When was the last time they’d done this? Before Shuri took charge of the Wakandan Design Group, probably.

T’Challa has been scrupulous about not hovering over her work with the Design Group, to give her a chance to establish herself as a leader there, and to demonstrate his trust in her abilities. And Shuri appreciates that, she truly does. But she misses when he’d come play or work with her at the sand table: he’d been the first one to set her down in one when she was so small she barely remembers it, and he’d smiled and praised just about every model and idea she’d built in a sand table under his supervision.

Now her intellect has raced ahead, and Shuri pretends no false modesty about that, has no regrets or insecurities about her genius, but she wishes, suddenly, that she’d paid a little more attention to the things she’d left behind in her headlong rush forward. They likely won’t ever again have the time or leisure to build fantastical modern cities and impossible flights of fancy out of vibranium sand together. Her brother is king and she leads the foremost research and design group in Wakanda, and playing is an indulgence that doesn’t exactly serve their people well. She sniffles and fights back the tears before they can fall, hoping T’Challa hasn’t noticed.

“Have you considered alternatives to a lattice structure?” asks T’Challa as yet another complex polyhedron collapses.

“I started out with the suit’s original structure and just modifying the counter frequency, of course, but then I thought I should change the structure and—” Wait. There it is, that idea she’d almost had in the small hours of the morning. “Maybe it’s a tiling problem, or—tessellation, a three-dimensional tessellation…” She scatters nanite sand in her rush to fling her arms around T’Challa. “Oh, Bucky was right, you _have_ helped, thank you! I’ve got it now!”

She grabs her things, and runs headlong out to go back to her own lab at Mount Bashenga.

“You’re welcome!” calls out T’Challa behind her.

* * *

“Shuri, what are you still doing in the lab, you’ve missed family dinner. Mother isn’t pleased.” 

At the sound of T’Challa’s voice, Shuri startles up from where she’s slumped over her lab table. It’s late enough that she can sense Nareema’s disapproval of her still being in the lab—Ayo must have told her about yesterday’s all-nighter at shift change, and someone must have snitched to T’Challa too judging by how fussy he sounds about her working through another night—but it’s only just past 11 PM, and Shuri’s not even _working_, she’s just waiting. She’ll leave the lab once the fabrication of the Panther suits is finished.

“I ate here, don’t worry! And I’ll apologize to Mother later, this is important.”

T’Challa’s mouth purses, in a familiar way that demonstrates just how dubious he is about how that will go over with their mother, but he lets it pass.

“Have you fixed the suit integrity problem or do you intend to work the whole night through until you do?” he asks her.

“I’m 90% certain I’ve solved it! Three-dimensional tessellation was the key.”

She’s about to launch into a detailed explanation when T’Challa interrupts her with a concerned frown.

“If you’ve solved it, then what are you still doing here? Ayo says you’ve been pulling all-nighters, but there is no deadline for you to meet, you don’t need to run yourself ragged.”

“No deadline?” Shuri boggles at him. “The deadline is you going to the Hague in a few days, brother! I will not send you back out into the world with a Panther suit that has such an enormous vulnerability!”

T’Challa’s concerned frown gets frownier. “Shuri…”

“Don’t _Shuri_ me! You are going to Europe to testify against our father’s murderer, and I am not about to make the same mistake I did when you and Baba went to Vienna. You will be better protected this time, I am making sure of it.” She flings the status readout of the fabrication unit into the center of the lab for T’Challa to see: only 40% left to go. “I will go to bed once the new Panther suits have been fabricated.”

T’Challa just shakes his head, and dismisses the status readout hologram with a wave of his own hand.

“I am already very well protected, and there are no outstanding security threats for this trip. There’s no rush to complete this project.”

“There were no serious security threats for the trip to Vienna either,” Shuri retorts, crossing her arms.

“And what happened in Vienna is no fault of yours, Shuri. It is no one’s fault but Zemo’s.”

“I know that,” snaps Shuri. “Of course I know that, and Ayo and Bucky said the same thing this morning. But the Panther suit is the responsibility you gave me, so I will make sure it’s perfect. You are not dying on my watch again, brother.”

T’Challa has no answer for that but to sigh and come wrap her up in a hug, and Shuri allows it. He isn’t all that much taller than her now, which is somewhat disconcerting, but a hug from him feels just the same as it had when she was little: tight and close, and always ending with a kiss to her temple or her forehead.

“I am blessed to have a little sister like you, and I know you take your responsibilities seriously,” he says, still holding her. “I have never doubted that. But my safety is not a burden for your shoulders alone. The vulnerability in the Panther suit is a serious one, yes, but the War Dogs and the Dora have not received any intelligence that anyone else has Klaue’s vibranium disrupting weapons. I am willing to take the small risk that using the suit as-is entails, just as I am willing to take the risk of our jet crashing on the trip, or, I don’t know, aliens invading.”

Shuri wriggles out of her brother’s hold and glares at him. “Don’t joke, T’Challa!”

“Who is joking?” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Alien invasions are, apparently, a genuine if small risk now. I know that we cannot anticipate everything. There’s no such thing as perfect safety.”

“Maybe so, but I still want you to have this version of the Panther suit that _doesn’t_ have a catastrophic vulnerability before you go to the Hague,” insists Shuri. “It’s almost done anyway, I’m only waiting for the fabrication to complete, and then I have some tests to run. Then it’s all yours!”

“Still, I don’t want you working so hard you’re missing meals and entire nights of sleep. It’s not good for you, and it’s not necessary when there is no emergency.” T’Challa puts his hands on her shoulders and gives her his best sincere and earnest look, the one that everyone caves to. “Promise me you will leave the tests for tomorrow?”

“Yes, yes, I wasn’t planning on staying here all night,” says Shuri, about to eel away from her brother’s hold again. His hands tighten on her shoulders just enough to keep her still, and she sighs and stays.

“And promise me you will take a break once I’m at the Hague?”

“I still have a great deal of work to do! The outreach centers, the Design Group—”

“Learn to delegate. They can do without your personal attention for a few days. You haven’t been taking any rest days these past couple of months, that is not sustainable. You’ll burn out, or make yourself ill.”

“Who snitched?” hisses Shuri, breaking free of T’Challa’s hold and whipping around to glare at Nareema. She maintains her stone statue stillness, as implacable as an idol of Bast.

“And,” continues T’Challa, clearly on a roll now, “Who said I died on your watch? I am alive and well, as you can see—”

“I thought the usurper _killed you_—”

“And if I was, briefly, slightly dead—”

“There’s no such thing as _slightly dead_!”

“Then it was a result of a challenge that our cousin had every right to bring.”

“What? How could you even _say that_—”

“He did many things wrong, but that first challenge was fairly fought, Shuri, without either of us using the heart-shaped herb or the Black Panther suit. It would not have been your responsibility if I had lost to M’Baku either. Now, promise me you will take a few rest days, please.”

He crosses his arms, and the stern but loving look he sends her way makes him look so much like Baba that she can’t even stand to look at him. She turns back towards the status bar of the fabrication unit: 25% left now.

“I like working and staying busy.”

“So do I, but even I have taken days off, and I am king.”

Shuri rolls her eyes. “You took days off to have private time with Nakia.”

“So? I consider that very restful.” T’Challa puts an arm around her shoulder. “Please, Shuri. You are young, work and your responsibilities should not be the whole of your life. Take a break every so often, spend time with your friends.”

The way other people her age do, is what T’Challa leaves unspoken. Shuri’s not like other people her age. Even so, he has a point about spending time with her friends. She’s let even their lively group chats pass her by with little more than the occasional response and reaction gif from her. 

“Fine,” says Shuri with a sigh. “If no fresh disaster happens, and you stay safe and sound at the Hague, I will take a break, I promise.”

“Thank you,” says T’Challa tugging her in for a kiss to her temple before letting her go.

“Only I still have to check up on Bucky, he has three more tests of the trigger words scheduled, and I need to make sure he’s recovering from the treatments and cryo as he should be.”

“So long as you don’t turn those check ups into days spent at the lab building him a new arm.”

“I wouldn’t! He says he’s not ready for a new prosthetic anyway.”

“That’s understandable. I hope you don’t intend to nag him about that.”

“I don’t, Nosipho has already said the choice is his whether he would like a new prosthetic or not.”

“He is doing well though? I haven’t had a chance to speak to him since he woke. I was hoping to pay him a visit after I return from Europe.”

Shuri frowns, remembering the last time she’d spoken to Bucky. “The triggers are gone, and he’s adjusting well, I think. He has most of his memories back, his mind and body are healing. Nosipho says he’s working hard on his healing, and that he’s a good student.”

“So why this frown?” asks T’Challa, tapping her furrowed brow.

“I think I gave him his griefs back along with his memories,” she admits. “And I worry about him wanting to wait to contact Captain Rogers.”

“You can’t separate his griefs from his memories. And even if you could, it wouldn’t be a kindness. As for Captain Rogers…whatever is between him and Bucky is their business. What is it you youths say, stay in your lane?”

“Please do not attempt slang if you’re going to qualify it with things ‘you youths say.’”

“Fine, but the point is that you have done your part in helping Bucky. Those things he still has to deal with, they aren’t your responsibility, at least, not beyond being kind to him.”

“I suppose so,” say Shuri, not entirely convinced. “It just doesn’t seem fair, that he must grieve and suffer still, even now that he’s free.”

In children’s stories and fables and fairy tales, waking Bucky and freeing him from the curse of the trigger words would have been the happily ever after, with the clever princess having saved the kind, tired old warrior. Shuri had seen through such pretty and slight stories when she was still little. Real life isn’t nearly so simple. She only wishes it could be, sometimes.

“If we are going to love people, we can’t avoid grieving them when we lose them,” says T’Challa with a sad smile. “Would you give up your grief for Baba, just to be happier?”

If T’Challa had asked her that in the days after Baba’s death, she might have said yes, to her shame. The grief had been overwhelming, unbearable, every part of her saying _no_ to the reality of a world without her Baba in it. Now her grief and love for her father are inextricable, the balance of which is the greater changing seemingly from moment to moment, sometimes thrown out of painful equilibrium entirely when her anger puts a finger on the scale, for she knows now that her father had not always been a good man, that he had made terrible mistakes that came back to hurt their family. And yet, she still wouldn’t give up her grief, not for that anger, and not for her own selfish happiness either. There’s only thing she’d give it up for.

“I would give up my grief to get him _back_.”

“As would I. But that will never be within our power.” T’Challa kisses her forehead again. “I miss him too, Shuri.”

“Even though you’re mad at him?”

“Even so. His voice is always with me, I am always wondering what he would think about my choices as a man, and as a king.”

“It’s not like that for me,” admits Shuri. “I’m just always thinking about what I should have told him, the things I should have done.”

“He’s proud of you. I know that in my heart. And I know too that he would want you to take care of yourself, _and_ your people.” The fabrication unit chimes out its completion melody. “So, the suits are finished. Will you come back to the palace for a proper night’s rest now?”

Shuri sighs, and the exhaustion of the long day catches up with her, like a runner she can no longer outrace.

“Yes, yes, I’m coming.”

* * *

Shuri gets a proper night’s sleep as promised, and after waking up closer to noon than she likes to admit, she spends an entirely reasonable three hours at the lab catching up on reports and correspondence. She even delegates the testing of the new Panther suits, admittedly because many of the tests are automated, but still, the point is that she’s willing to leave the lab for a day. Or half a day, at least, and she’ll still have the new Panther suit ready for T’Challa before he leaves.

With that responsibility pressing on her less, Shuri can meet up with her friends in the City for the first time in—she winces, and stops bothering to cast her memory backwards when she finds she’s reaching back two months and more. Her friends are understanding, and message her with effusive invitations, but Shuri still feels bad for dropping so thoroughly out of any semblance of a social life, especially since her social life has never been exactly full.

The combination of Shuri’s compressed and fast ascension through the Wakandan education system and her royal status have left her with a somewhat circumscribed peer group that mostly consists of younger graduate students at the University of Wakanda who are nevertheless still older than Shuri, and the teenaged scions of the leading families of Wakanda, and Shuri doesn’t entirely fit in with either group. T’Challa always assures her it will get better when she’s older, when she can be on somewhat more even footing with her peers, but Shuri’s not sure she needs it to get better. She’s perfectly happy having a small circle of friends and acquaintances who are good company, and who don’t pay much mind to her being a princess.

_Come to the University Park, we are having a dinner picnic with movies!!!_

_Perfect_, thinks Shuri. If there are movies, Shuri won’t have to talk about any of the reasons she’s been so absent.

* * *

When Shuri presents her brother with the new and improved Panther suit, she does so with equal parts pride and worry: pride in her work, worry about if or how her work will be tested.

“The suit passed all the tests, it will hold up against any vibranium disruption tech now. Well, probably not a _sustained _assault, as in minutes long, but I can’t work miracles.”

“This is miracle enough. Thank you, Shuri,” says T’Challa, and kisses her forehead.

“Please try not to get blown up, or get into any new superhero fights,” Shuri tells him, trying for a joking tone, and entirely failing.

“I will do my best.”

“And make sure Zemo faces justice. For Baba, and all the other people he killed. And for Bucky, too.”

“I will. It will be fine, Shuri. I will be gone for only a few days,” T’Challa says, too gentle.

As if that’s the problem. “An entire week,” Shuri corrects him anyway.

Shuri’s happy that Wakanda is no longer hiding from the world, she truly is, but she’s not happy about how much diplomacy T’Challa has to do now, not when it means he has to be out there in a dangerous world. It’s entirely rational for Shuri to worry about him being gone for so long.

“Nakia will be with me too. It’s safe, Shuri. I promise.”

Okay, _now_ she’s being patronized. She’s about to make a choice remark to that effect, but her mother puts an arm around her shoulder and squeezes.

“We will await your safe return, T’Challa,” says Mother, and they see T’Challa off with smiles and waves, just as they had when he’d gone to Vienna and come back without Baba.

* * *

They do more than just wait, thanks to Okoye. The proceedings at the Hague are not officially broadcast, due to some of the testimony being deemed sensitive and classified given Zemo’s ties to Sokovian intelligence and HYDRA. Okoye gets them access though, so Shuri joins Mother in her study, and together they watch T’Challa give his own testimony and victim impact statement.

Before he left, T’Challa had asked her if she wanted him to say anything on her behalf. _Nothing fit for a courtroom of international law_, she’d told him. Nothing any of them say is likely to have an impact on Zemo anyway, and the trial has a foregone conclusion, thanks to the strength of the evidence. She doesn’t know why they’re even bothering to watch.

“There’s no closure in watching this,” Shuri says, fully expecting to receive a lecture from Mother.

To her surprise, instead Mother says, “No, there isn’t. Our loss isn’t real to this man. Nothing will make it so, not looking his victims in the eye, and not punishment either.”

“So why is T’Challa even there?”

“To speak for Wakanda, as a king must, and to speak for his father.”

Mother pauses, and they listen to T’Challa’s resonant, steady voice, speaking in what Shuri recognizes as his official kingly tone even as he lays his grief for their father bare. He mentions Bucky too, and his innocence, taking responsibility for his own error in attacking Bucky, and he ends with the way Zemo manipulated the Accords in pursuit of revenge. _A ha_. Now Shuri gets why T’Challa is there.

T’Challa’s been trying to lay the groundwork for Wakanda’s withdrawal of support for the Accords. The reasons Baba had supported them are now dwarfed by the considerable drawbacks, to say nothing of the ambivalence T’Challa himself has about the Accords, after he’d seen how easily they could be corrupted. This is all decidedly outside Shuri’s lane, but Mother isn’t the only one who can extract some information from the Dora Milaje, and Shuri always likes to stay informed.

“And to engage in some politics,” Shuri says, and her mother nods.

“Yes, because that too is a king’s work.”

They watch until T’Challa’s part in the proceedings comes to an end, and then they turn their attention to the Dora Milaje’s reports. Only when the Dora who are on guard duty for T’Challa give the all clear do Shuri and Mother look away from the screen. Now Shuri is the focus of her mother’s attention, to her dismay.

“Thank you for your work on the Panther suit. You did very well to make it safer for your brother.”

Shuri’s cheeks heat under the praise, but she still narrows her eyes at her mother, sensing that there’s going to be some caveat here. There is, of course.

Mother continues, “Now that that’s taken care of, I trust you can afford to take a bit of a break. I understand your other projects aren’t so pressing or time-sensitive.”

For all that Shuri wants to protest, to cite the outreach centers and research on Klaue’s weapons and the Wakandan Design Group, gainsaying Mother’s _understanding_ isn’t a good idea. Mother is always far too well-informed about every detail of Citadel life, and her children’s lives, and Shuri suspects T’Challa told her about Shuri’s promise to him that she’d take a break if all went well at the Hague. There’s no weaseling out of it now: if Mother expects Shuri to take a break for her own good, Shuri is going to take a break.

“I still have follow-ups scheduled with Bucky, he wants to test the trigger words for another couple of weeks,” Shuri tries, because surely Mother can’t object to that.

Thankfully she doesn’t. Mother inclines her head in a nod and says, “Of course. Nosipho tells me he is settling in well at the village.”

“What else has she told you? The details of his recovery should not be—”

Mother raises her hand and smiles. “Peace, daughter. Your charge’s privacy has not been violated. That’s all Nosipho has told me. I’m only pleased to know your treatments were successful, and that Sergeant Barnes is well.”

To Shuri’s relief, Mother picks up her tablet then, splitting her attention between Shuri and her correspondence.

“As well as he can be,” says Shuri, frowning. “He helped me with the suit project.”

“And got you to actually speak to your brother about it, I’m told,” says Mother, not looking up from whatever message she’s responding to, so Shuri rolls her eyes.

“Honestly, Mother, you might as well just rejoin the Dora Milaje at this point if you are going to be all up in their business all the time. Yes, Bucky nagged at me to ask T’Challa for help, and he said I should take a break too. I told him he fussed too much, but—”

Shuri stops, remembering the awful, griefstricken expression on Bucky’s face.

“But?”

“He said he was fussing just as much as he ever did with his own sisters, and then he looked very sad and tragic and fled my lab. His sisters are long dead, I’m pretty sure.”

Mother looks up then. “His grief is his own, Shuri. It is not yours to fix.”

“I’m aware of that. It is only that I feel responsible, sort of,” she confesses.

“How is it possibly your responsibility?” demands her mother, then shakes her head. “I’m grateful you have such a strong sense of duty, dear, but I assure you, that poor man’s tragedies and traumas are not your responsibility.” Shuri’s about to make a retort, but Mother continues, “If he feels his griefs more keenly now, it is because it is a necessary part of his healing. Don’t take on burdens that aren’t your own.”

“I still feel like I ought to do _something_.”

“He acted as an elder brother to you, so be a younger sister to him. And once you are both certain he is truly free of those trigger words, invite him and Captain Rogers to dinner with us.”

Shuri gapes in disbelieving horror. “A _state dinner_? Mother, no, Bucky has suffered enough—”

“Shuri,” her mother chides, but smiling. “No, not a state dinner. A _family_ dinner.”

“Do you think that will help?” asks Shuri, hoping the question sounds more polite than dubious.

Family dinners are less of an ordeal than state dinners, sure, and they’re nice so long as Mother isn’t grilling her or T’Challa about their life choices, but she’s not certain what good inviting Bucky and Captain Rogers to one will do.

“Did you see Zemo’s own testimony?”

Answering a question with a question. Great. Shuri is in for a _lesson_.

“No. I didn’t think it was public.” Mother smiles, lifting one amused eyebrow, and Shuri sighs. “Right, of course. Anyway, I’m not that interested in what Zemo has to say for himself. I’ve had enough of villainous monologues, after the usurper.”

“Hmm. Well, I needed answers, so I watched his testimony, hoping for some—closure, I suppose. And I received it, in a way. Zemo lost his family in the incident in Sokovia, and he blamed the Avengers. Understandable enough. His response, however, was to seek revenge, and it didn’t matter to him how many innocent people he murdered along the way. He didn’t give your father, or us, any thought at all. He didn’t see anything wrong with doing to us, what was done to him.”

Yeah, Shuri’s glad she didn’t bother to watch Zemo spout that bullshit.

“Did it help, knowing that? Because it doesn’t help me.”

“I found it clarifying. It helped me to decide how I wanted to respond to our own losses.”

“Do you have a byzantine and cruel revenge plot you’d like to enact, Mother? I wouldn’t be opposed.”

This earns her a Look, complete with pursed lips, so Shuri straightens her spine and wipes the sass from her expression.

“Be serious, Shuri. No, I do not have a revenge plot to enact, though I will not deny that the thought was tempting. I have a family dinner I’d like to enact instead.”

“I don’t think I’m following your logic here.”

“We choose how to respond to our losses. Our griefs have brought us together with Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers, and maybe there is no cure for those griefs. But we can certainly do the opposite of Zemo, and build family rather than take it away from others. Perhaps that will be enough to ease our burdens, at least a little.”

Mother smiles at her, though her eyes are shining with tears, and the tightness in the lines around her mouth tells Shuri that this grace is costing her. Shuri takes her mother’s hand and squeezes, and Mother grips back, strong and tight.

“That seems like a lot to ask of one dinner.”

Mother laughs, watery and bright. “I know. But it’s how I’d like to start, dear.”

* * *

When it’s time for Bucky’s second check of the trigger words the next day, Shuri goes to him rather than asking him to come to her lab. Not for the sake of taking a break, or at least not only for that: Shuri wants the distraction. If she stays here in her lab, she’ll keep the security feed provided by T’Challa’s Dora Milaje guards running non-stop, and it’s making her anxious. Absolutely nothing of interest is happening on said feed, and yet she’s still anxious, which is how she knows she has got to stop watching it.

So she goes to meet Bucky rather than asking him to meet her. It will only take a few short hours of her day to go there and come back, but that’s still better than rattling around the lab or the Citadel.

She checks in with Nosipho first, which is a mistake; Nosipho’s in league with her mother, clearly, because after letting Shuri know that Bucky’s doing about as well as can be expected, Nosipho neatly entraps Shuri into spending the rest of the day in the village. Ostensibly Shuri’s doing her royal duties by chatting with the elders there about maintenance of the village’s shields and listening to some of the village children as they shyly share their latest science projects. In actuality, she’s being cheerfully manipulated into spending a calm day in a slow-paced, sleepy village where Bucky’s arrival is the most exciting thing to happen in quite possibly decades, and where Shuri has nothing to do but talk to people and eat the food she’s offered.

“You know I’m only here for a quick follow-up with Bucky,” Shuri tries, interrupting Nosipho’s exhortation that she absolutely must visit the hot springs in the caves to the northeast before she leaves.

Nosipho waves her hand. “Of course, of course, the children are going to fetch him, Liwa took him out for a ramble around the border to get him acquainted with the area.”

A quick return to the city is starting to seem more and more unlikely.

“Are they far? I can take a hover bike and meet them—”

“Whatever for? I don’t see why you’d need to rush so. They’ll be back soon enough. Here, sit, stay, drink some more tea. You don’t spend nearly enough time in the country, your highness.”

Shuri takes the tea with a hopefully polite and not at all tortured smile. This. This is why Shuri does not spend more time in the country. Everything is so _slow _and _drawn out_.

Thankfully Bucky returns just as Shuri’s slurping the last of her tea. A gaggle of half a dozen chattering children surround him, with one little boy even sitting on his shoulders. Shuri takes a photo, of course, and immediately sends it to T’Challa. Judging by her last check of his Dora guards’ status reports, he’s still in Europe doing boring and tense diplomacy, so she’s sure he’ll appreciate the delightful and hilarious sight of his ex-assassin charity case being overwhelmed by curious and enthusiastic children.

“Children, are you bothering Bucky again?” she calls out, and is answered with a collective _no_ from the children, and grins from Bucky and Liwa.

Bucky kneels down to let the child perched on his shoulders scramble off, who promptly joins the small crowd of children who are headed Shuri’s way. She supposes a princess is a marginally more interesting sight to them, at least temporarily.

“Princess, princess, are you here for White Wolf?” asks one of the little boys.

“Who?”

The children point and gesture at Bucky. “White Wolf!”

Shuri frowns and puts her hands on her hips. “I hope you all asked him if you can call him that, his name is Bucky you know.”

“It’s alright,” says the man himself, his eyes still crinkled up with a gentle grin. “Not sure what it means, but I’m guessing it’s not an insult, and it’s sure as hell not the Winter Soldier, so I’m not gonna object.”

This seems like a low bar to Shuri. Given that he doesn’t recognize the Xhosa word, for all Bucky knows the children could be calling him white devil or colonizer or something. Not that their parents would allow that, but still. As inexplicable a nickname as White Wolf is, Bucky is right though: it’s certainly not an insult. And maybe Bucky will know the nickname’s origin once she translates the word for him.

“It means white wolf,” she tells him.

No understanding dawns on Bucky’s face, and Shuri’s still trying to place why the name is familiar, when the children explain with cheerful enthusiasm.

“Yeah, like White Wolf from The Pride!”

And _that’s _where Shuri recognizes the name from: the favorite educational program of all Wakandan children under the age of ten. Shuri herself had outgrown the program relatively early. By age five, she’d been far more interested in T’Challa’s books and recordings of University of Wakanda lectures than in the educational cartoon adventures of assorted animals. White Wolf, she now recalls, had been a recurring character who visited the Pride to bring new stories, in a somewhat transparent device for exposing children to non-Wakandan and non-African fairy tales, and educational anecdotes about different biomes. She supposes that to the children, White Wolf is the closest analogue they have to Bucky.

One of the little girls confirms just that as she says, “Mama said we gotta be nice ‘cause he’s a friend like White Wolf is and he came from real far away and we gotta show him around because he doesn’t know anything about Wakanda and also he was sick so he’s here to get better and we should help and not bother him too much—”

Shuri’s almost disappointed when one of the other children interrupts that breathless litany.

“And we haven’t! We’re helping, I braided White Wolf’s hair today!”

She takes a look at Bucky’s hair, and feels her smile, already wide, grow wide enough to cause some actual muscle strain in her cheeks. Bucky’s hair is in fact in a braid: a messy, short, stubby sort of braid, but it is braided, and tied back with a brightly colored child’s hair tie.

“And you did a very good job!” Shuri praises her. “Did you use one of your own hair ties?”

“Yes!” says the girl, beaming. “And I told Mr. White Wolf he can keep it.”

“Thank you, miss,” says Bucky with exaggerated solemnity.

“So, if Bucky is White Wolf, who here is Sister Lioness?” Half the kids wave their hands, and an energetic discussion ensues: who’s Sister Lioness, and who’s Cousin Elephant, and how obviously Thabo is Mr. Spider, and so on and so forth. “Alright, go on now, go play, I have to give your White Wolf here a check up to make sure he’s getting better.”

The children give her a staggered chorus of _yes princess _and _thank you princess_ and move on to some other interesting part of the village, with all the quiet and grace of a mini herd of galloping wildebeest.

“I think I’m gonna choose to be flattered to be called White Wolf?” says Bucky.

Shuri grins at him and nods. “It’s a very cute nickname, yes.”

Bucky squints at her suspiciously. “Cute? Why _cute_?”

She pulls up an image of White Wolf from The Pride cartoon on her projector bead, and projects the image of a distinctly fluffy and cuddly white wolf into the air. Actual wolves, Shuri knows, are big, rangy creatures, not unlike Bucky, actually. Though this cartoon exaggeration of a wolf looks far more like one of the fluffy and cheerful breeds of dog that are close cousins to their wolf ancestors.

“Not seeing the likeness,” says Bucky, and Shuri cackles.

“What, you don’t feel this cute and cuddly in your innermost heart? Because I feel like you are probably this cute and cuddly in your innermost heart.”

Bucky sighs deeply and gives her an aggrieved look as they fall into step and head towards the cluster of cottages by the lakeside.

“This is Bucky Bears all over again,” he mutters, and before Shuri can follow up on that, he says, “So did you figure out the thing with the Panther suit?”

“Yes! I owe you a thank you, and not just for your help with the tests. T’Challa did end up being the one to give me the idea for the solution, so you were right about asking him.”

“I’m glad. Knew you’d figure it out.” They’ve reached the cottages now, and Bucky gestures her inside the one nestled between a small stand of trees, the lake, and an animal enclosure. “Here we are, my humble abode.”

Much of life out in the country happens outdoors, so the spare yet cozy interior of the cottage is no surprise to Shuri. Bucky seems to like it well enough too, thankfully.

“You’re still comfortable here, right?” she asks as they sit at the small kitchenette table. “Nosipho and I thought the calmer pace of country life would help you, but I know you grew up in a big city. If you’d prefer the Golden City, I’m sure we can accommodate you in the Citadel.”

“No, I may be a city boy, but I like it out here.” He gestures around the cottage. “This is more than I need, really, and I’m grateful to have such a nice place.”

“Well, tell me if you tire of country life. I know I can only ever manage a couple of days out here before I’m dying of boredom.”

“Boredom’s not a problem for me, Princess. I’ve got your syllabus to get through after all.”

“You really were a, what’s the term, teacher’s pet, weren’t you?” Bucky shrugs and grins, but doesn’t deny it. “Alright, let’s see if you pass this test. Ready?”

When Bucky nods, Shuri brings up a readout of his prime bead, then reels off the litany of the trigger words. Bucky’s face takes on that sickly almost greenish tinge again, and he’s struggling to breathe evenly, but according to his prime bead’s readout, it’s nothing more than his understandable anxiety response. When she asks him if he’s ready to comply, he responds with a firm if raspy _no_.

“There, see, the trigger word elimination is still in effect! Shall we call Captain Rogers now?”

Despite her cheerful, encouraging smile, Bucky shakes his head, still pale.

“Two more tests, next week.”

“And then you promise you’ll call Captain Rogers? You won’t find some other excuse?” presses Shuri.

Bucky tilts his head, his eyes narrowing with wariness.

“Why does it matter so much to you that I call Steve?”

“We promised him that we could help you. I want him to know Wakanda has kept that promise. Also, I don’t know him, really, but I know he cares about you and that he deserves to know you are safe and well.”

“_You _could call him and tell him all that, though.”

“If you were okay with that,” says Shuri carefully.

Bucky shrugs, his wariness dissipating. “I’ll call him next week, if the trigger words don’t work then either.”

“Good,” says Shuri with a relieved sigh. “When you do, invite him to Wakanda to visit you. You’ve both been invited to dinner by my mother.”

“Wait, what? Why?” Bucky looks faintly panicked. Good to know the response to an official dinner invitation from her mother inspires panic in people other than just dignitaries and her children. “Is this, like, some kinda official function, because I don’t think that’s entirely safe what with the whole us being fugitives thing—”

“Oh, no, don’t worry, it’s not anything official or royal or what have you. It’s just a family dinner. Which is the other reason I think Captain Rogers ought to come, even apart from how Mother wants to invite him. He’s your family, isn’t he?”

Bucky is silent for a long moment, his brow furrowed and his eyes downturned, long enough for Shuri to worry that she’s misjudged this horribly.

Eventually, he says, low and soft, “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose that’s what it boils down to, in some ways.”

Shuri thinks of the secondhand memory she’d seen, the one linked to _seventeen_, and she almost asks about it. There’s a reason she’d left that memory before it had reached its end though: it’s not for her to know whether or not that memory had ended in a kiss. And whether it had or not, maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with who Bucky and Captain Rogers are to each other now.

Before Shuri can ask any diplomatically worded, or even undiplomatically blunt, questions about just what exactly Bucky’s relationship status with Captain Rogers is and/or was—together? broken up? it’s complicated? miserably pining?—Bucky speaks. Which is for the best, probably. _Stay in your lane, Shuri. Old white men’s maybe-romantic problems are not your lane._

“Will T’Challa be back from Europe in time for this, uh, family dinner?” he asks.

“Yes, which reminds me, he’d like to see how you’re doing once he returns.”

“Feels weird having all this, uh, royal attention.”

“If it makes you feel better, T’Challa’s attention is totally because he feels very guilty about ruining your life. So, you know, if you could reassure him that it’s all worked out for the best when he visits, that would be great.”

“Sure. I mean, it pretty much has, hasn’t it?”

“Hmm, yeah, no, I was more thinking that you telling him that would be a little white lie? On account of how you and your friends are fugitives from justice, you lost your prosthetic arm, and you are in hiding as the only white man in this entire country. Things could really be _better _for you.”

Which, _way to go, Shuri_. That cannot help to make the poor man feel better. To her surprise though, Bucky laughs in genuine delight, his face creasing up with joyful wrinkles.

“Yeah, maybe. But I’ve got low standards: anything that’s not being frozen and thawed out and mind wiped is a win in my book. Your brother’s got nothing to feel guilty about with me.”

“Eh, well, he is a king. I think it’s a job requirement: feel responsible for and guilty about every bad thing that’s within your power.”

“Just a king thing? Sounds like it’s maybe a princess thing too,” says Bucky mildly.

“That’s _different_, the Panther suits are _my _responsibility, so of course if something happens and they fail or T’Challa gets hurt then I—”

“Trip’s gone fine so far, hasn’t it?”

“There are still four days left for something to go horribly wrong.”

“You gonna spend all of those four days worrying?”

“No!”

“Good,” says Bucky, standing from his chair. “Because I wanted to go out on the lake, but it turns out if you try to row with just one arm, you end up going in circles. Wanna help an old man out?”

Shuri narrows her eyes at him. This feels like a distraction. From what, she’s not entirely sure. She’s loathe to deny him anything so simple though.

“Alright. But you’re on your own if you intend to do any fishing.”

* * *

Shuri regards the decidedly no-tech rowboat with some annoyance.

“We have small vehicles capable of hovering, you know. Hover bikes, hover boats, hover vehicles…”

“Lake’s not that big. And as everyone in the village keeps telling me when I’m helping to wash dishes and shovel goat crap, not everything needs to be improved with technology.”

“Yeah, yeah, tradition is important, blah blah blah.” Shuri gets how that keeps Wakandan society tied to its roots and the land, it’s just so _inconvenient _sometimes. She sighs and steps into the small boat. “Come on, hop in. At the very least, I suppose this will count as a workout.”

Once Shuri has rowed them out into the middle of the lake, she’s more or less immediately bored. The scenery is nice, sure, and she likes the sound of water lapping against the sides of the little boat. These bucolic country delights only offer so much interest and pleasure though. Judging by the tiny frown wrinkling Bucky’s forehead, he’s none too interested in this whole boat experience either.

“Well?” she prompts. “Is it all you dreamed of?”

“Nosipho’s the one who suggested this, but I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to be getting out of it,” he admits.

“She probably thinks it’s relaxing or some such nonsense.”

“Going through that syllabus you gave me is more relaxing.”

“Thank you! Yes! Mental stimulation is indeed very relaxing, and I don’t think it counts as _work _nor is it stressful, so really, I think my colleagues should let me back in my lab.”

Bucky’s lips curve into a sardonic smile.

“Never mind, I take it back, I think I see her point.”

“Nonsense. How far along in the syllabus are you, by the way? I can send you another on Wakanda’s science and computing advances, and of course your kimoyo beads give you access to the Library of Wakanda, both digital and physical—”

“Really?” asks Bucky, everything about him brightening. Wow, he truly is a nerd. “I’m only halfway through your syllabus, it’s a lot, but it’s going a lot better than Wikipedia article hopping ever did for me...”

Bucky truly is an avid and diligent student, now that he has a chance to be so without worrying about his survival and staying off the grid. Before Shuri knows it, they’ve been talking long enough that Bucky’s reminder to eat chime goes off, and they move their discussion to the village kitchen. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d told Bucky he had a lot to learn back when he woke from cryo: not just about memes and Wakanda and the prosaic realities of living here, but about the rest of the world too. Sure, he knows the basics, but his knowledge is all geared towards survival. There’s so much more than that, the serious things like the wonders of scientific discovery and the rapid pace of history, and the just plain fun things too: pop culture, memes, music, art, books, and so many other things that Shuri’s still learning about too. It’s nice to share that with someone who nearly matches her excitement. The rest of her visit goes quickly and easily as they pass the best of those fun parts back and forth.

It’s only when she leaves after dinner that she realizes she’s been quite thoroughly tricked into taking a day off.

* * *

T’Challa’s trip concludes successfully, or at least Shuri thinks it does. She counts it a success anyway, since there were no assassination attempts or superhero fights, and T’Challa returns to Wakanda safe and sound. Although he does end up embroiled in many meetings about the meetings he just had in Europe, which seems hellishly recursive to Shuri. She’s very glad that international diplomacy is not part of her own royal duties.

Having taken enough of a break to satisfy her mother, the Dora, and her colleagues, Shuri returns to said royal duties in the lab, and even keeps a semblance of regular hours now that she has no urgent deadlines. She can give some proper attention to the outreach centers, finally, and while that’s not the kind of inventing and lab work she excels in, it’s a new kind of challenge that’s proving fun to tackle.

Soon enough, it’s time for Bucky’s penultimate check of the trigger words, and he meets her in the lab, looking decidedly frazzled. The only explanation he offers is a deeply harried expression and the word _goats_. The check passes as uneventfully as the two before it, and before Shuri knows it, another few days have passed and it’s time for the last check of Bucky’s trigger words. Well, the last check before Bucky’s sufficiently convinced that the trigger word removal has worked. Shuri still intends to check the trigger words again at three-month intervals to make sure they stay gone for good.

To her surprise, it’s T’Challa who comes to fetch her for the trip out to the border to see Bucky, showing up in her lab looking vaguely hunted.

“Weren’t you going to go check on Bucky today?”

“Yes,” says Shuri, drawing out the word as she peers at her brother. His posture is distinctly restless and defensive what with the stiff shoulders and fidgeting hands. “I was going to go after midday.”

“Let’s go now,” he says, in a tone that can’t decide if it’s a suggestion or an order.

“You look shifty,” she notes. “Have you committed some crime? Are you making a break for the border?”

“No, but I _am_ fleeing the Citadel before I can be dragged into yet another meeting,” he admits. “I could really use an afternoon in the country, and of course, I will have to stay for dinner there or risk horribly offending Nosipho.”

“Of course,” says Shuri with the same exaggerated solemnity T’Challa used to afford to her when she’d offered up similarly transparent excuses for ignoring her boring lessons in favor of getting lost in the library. Well, far be it from her to thwart her brother’s plans to play hooky. She taps out a few commands on her workstation to leave some programs running in her absence and wipes her projects off the screens. “Let’s go then.”

* * *

T’Challa’s tense shoulders relax the moment they land in the village. Looking out at the village’s green and amber-tinted calm, the way everything in the village moves at a gentle, honeyed pace with nothing more urgent than the latest livestock escape to attend to, Shuri gets it. There’s definitely something freeing about such peace. Boring, to Shuri’s mind, but definitely freeing and peaceful. She leaves T’Challa with Nosipho to appreciate said bucolic peace, while she goes to meet Bucky.

“I don’t think he likes having an audience for this,” she tells T’Challa as they walk out of the Royal Talon jet and into one of the village’s fallow fields. “We’ll meet you and Nosipho after we’re done, it shouldn’t take long.”

T’Challa nods, already following Nosipho to greet the villagers who are waiting for him. There’s no real incognito travel when you’re a king, and while it’s not as if Wakanda is big on pomp and circumstance, there are still certain expectations when T’Challa travels the country. Namely that he should allow any and everyone to shower him with hospitality while they bend his ear about some issue or another. Shuri’s just grateful that with T’Challa drawing all the attention of villagers young and old, she can reach Bucky’s cottage without an entourage.

She knocks on Bucky’s door in a cheerful rhythm, just in case he hasn’t yet gotten the hang of the kimoyo bead notification.

“White Wolf, open up! Your favorite scientist princess is here!”

He opens the door for her with a quick smile, the sweet and crinkly-eyed one that she now recognizes as his real, almost not at all sad smile. “You say that like I know a lot of scientist princesses.”

As he gestures her inside, Shuri gives him a thorough side-eye; now that he’s not smiling, she can tell that he’s more frazzled and nervous than she’s seen him before one of these tests so far, fidgety in a way that doesn’t seem at all characteristic given his usual deliberate, steady stillness.

“What’s all this then?” asks Shuri.

“All what?”

Shuri waves a hand around Bucky’s head, making sure the gesture encompasses his disheveled hair and his whole face region.

“This whole scrunchy face situation! Are you truly nervous the trigger words will suddenly work again?”

“Yeah, kinda!”

“I am choosing not to be offended by this slight to my excellent work fixing your brain,” Shuri informs him, earning herself an annoyed nose scrunch and scowl. It is, in its own way, an encouraging sight: it means her little sister powers have begun taking effect on Bucky. “Is there a reason for your nerves, or are you just freaking out?”

Bucky’s scowl escalates to a distinctly grumpy cat glare. Maybe that should be his nickname instead of White Wolf. When Shuri just raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, the grumpy cat of it all shifts into wide-eyed worry.

“I just—I keep dreaming of the triggers,” admits Bucky.

“Nightmares?”

Bucky shrugs. “Not really? Just weird dreams, and memories.”

“That’s not necessarily anything to worry about,” says Shuri slowly, thinking it over. “It may even be a good sign. If your brain can acknowledge the trigger words now, if it’s working to process them in REM sleep, that may well be a sign that they words have truly lost their hold on your mind. We won’t know for certain until we do this test though.”

“Right,” says Bucky, before taking a deep breath. “Okay, yeah, go ahead.”

Bucky stands this time, his hand clenched in the fabric of the red robe he’s wearing, the same one he’d worn when he’d first woken from cryo in the village. When she starts reciting the words, he paces in the small space of the cottage, the motion more nervous than predatory as tightly constrained as it is. He only stops when Shuri says the last word.

“Ready to comply?”

“No,” he says, as if surprised, and the sound he makes after that is something Shuri has no word for, a sound that’s somehow both a laugh and a sob all at once. She only gets a brief glimpse of the devastated relief on Bucky’s face before he covers it with his shaking hand. She can hear him gasp in a few harsh and trembling breaths.

“See? You are truly free of HYDRA, Bucky,” says Shuri gently. She guides him to a chair, and he lets her push him into it without protest. “We will check the words every three months after this, just in case, but they’re gone, it’s over.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” says Bucky faintly. She fetches him a cup of water. She’s not certain what good that will do, but it feels like the sort of thing you do for someone who’s had a bit of a shock, even if it’s a pleasant shock. “Can you—can you give me a minute? I’m—I’m gonna call Steve and—yeah.”

“Of course. T’Challa and I will be waiting in the village, when you’re ready.” She wavers for a moment, not quite ready to leave. Surely this moment calls for something more than this. “Can I hug you? I feel like this is possibly the sort of moment that calls for a hug.”

Bucky smiles at her, distinctly watery but happy in a way that makes Shuri’s eyes water too. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

So Shuri bends down to hug him, just as she hugs T’Challa, though Bucky hugs her back far more gingerly than T’Challa ever has, his arm loose and tentative around her shoulders. He needs more practice, clearly.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “I know I keep saying it, but there’s no way I’m ever gonna be able to thank you enough.”

“You are so very welcome,” Shuri tells him, then lets him go. “Now, call Captain Rogers and tell him the good news. That will be thanks enough for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

Many of the villagers have congregated at the village kitchen’s outdoor seating area, where T’Challa has undoubtedly been holding what passes for a royal court out here in the country—a laidback affair, judging by T’Challa’s relaxed posture and the laughter she hears as she approaches.

“I’m guessing the removal of the trigger words is officially a success now?” says T’Challa once she reaches them.

Nosipho smiles broadly and gathers Shuri into a congratulatory hug. “Look at that smile, of course it was!”

“Yes, it was!” confirms Shuri.

That sets off a round of congratulations, after which villagers begin drifting away as if by unspoken agreement to leave Shuri and T’Challa with Nosipho. She plies them with tea and pastries and fresh fruit, the hospitality of the village on full display, and demands all the finest news and gossip from the Golden City.

T’Challa pretends like he’s above trading in gossip, but Shuri knows better: they’re both Mother’s children after all, and Mother considers gossip just another form of knowledge to be gained. T’Challa just happens to hide his nosiness better than Shuri or Mother do. Shuri suspects he manages it thanks to the natural solemnity of his face, which is just unfair. Too bad this afternoon’s gossip is of the mostly boring variety, all about some shake-ups among the River Tribe elders and the tentative first preparations for T’Challa and Nakia’s wedding.

Shuri gently mocks T’Challa’s wedding-related jitters, but mostly she stays quiet, having little of relevance to contribute to the conversation. Instead she occupies herself with some mental schedule juggling for the next month. She really needs to schedule some site visits for the outreach centers, but trips abroad are always a whole ordeal what with security requirements… She gets through one and a half cups of tea and one pastry as she considers these problems, before Bucky joins them.

His call with Captain Rogers must have gone well, judging by the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. There’s something tentative about that smile though, like he’s happy but he’s confused about said happiness, or like he doesn’t quite believe it.

“Well, did you call your BFF? What did he say?”

Bucky schools his face back into some semblance of neutrality, and takes a seat beside Nosipho on the other side of the table from her and T’Challa.

“I left a message.”

Shuri narrows her eyes at him. “Bullshit.”

“Language,” mutters T’Challa, without much conviction.

“Yeah, no, we talked,” says Bucky, breaking into a dazzlingly bright smile, which, okay, Shuri would have brought sunglasses if she’d known that was going to be directed at her. “Uh, he’s gonna come in a couple days? If that’s okay?”

“Captain Rogers is welcome here,” says T’Challa, matching Bucky’s smile. “I gave him the coordinates to pass through the shield for just such a visit before he left.”

“And remember, he’s invited to the family dinner,” Shuri reminds Bucky. “Now we have something to officially celebrate!”

“Guess we do,” says Bucky, still smiling, before turning to T’Challa. “Thank you, for everything.”

They’re all smiling now; it’s pretty hard not to, faced with Bucky’s sunshiny joy. This, Shuri thinks, is a glimpse at the happy young man he used to be, before all his wars. She’s guessing—hoping, really—that Captain Rogers’ happiness will shine just as brightly as Bucky’s.

_Take that, Zemo_. Maybe he’d succeeded in part of his plan, but at least they’re clawing this one thing back by knitting these two lives back together when Zemo had wanted them wrecked and ruined. Zemo hadn’t spared a single thought for Wakanda or her family when he blew up the UN meeting, too fixated on his sick revenge plot. He’d dismissed them as collateral damage, if he’d thought of them at all. So it feels good and right that she and T’Challa have achieved a better revenge: T’Challa had kept Zemo from killing himself and avoiding justice, and now both she and T’Challa are undoing some of the harm he caused. They, at least, are building something here, or rebuilding it maybe, while Zemo has only torn himself apart.

“It has been my sincere pleasure, Bucky,” says T’Challa. “I know it’s not justice for what Zemo and HYDRA have done, and I am still so very sorry to have rushed to judgment after Vienna, but I hope you know you will always be safe here, so long as it is within my power.”

“Or mine,” adds Shuri. When T’Challa raises an eyebrow at her, she says, “What? I’m a princess, I have power! Also, you placed him under my care, so I am being responsible.”

“So you are,” says Nosipho, and possibly Shuri is being patronized, but Nosipho’s twinkling and indulgent smile seems genuine enough.

Bucky just nods in the face of all this, clearly overwhelmed, and Nosipho kindly pushes a mug of tea at him before she steers the conversation to less feelings-y territory. Eventually Nosipho is called away to some duty or another—likely to do with whatever dinner the village is preparing for their royal guests, which while it isn’t likely to be fancy or fussy, is almost certain to be abundant and fun—and they’re left to do some of that catching up with Bucky that’s the ostensible reason for T’Challa’s visit.

“You’re comfortable here, I hope? We chose this village for your recovery since it’s more quiet than the city, and there are others here who have been through similar experiences as you, but if you’d prefer the city, the Citadel has more than enough room.”

“I told Shuri already, I’m fine out here, thank you,” says Bucky, and after a few prompting questions from T’Challa, Bucky’s initially hesitant conversation gets more confident, and he talks some about country life and how he’s settling in.

T’Challa’s good at people like that. Shuri kind of doubts that anyone else who’d quite sincerely attempted to capture and/or kill a non-Winter Soldiered Bucky would have such success. On the trip back, Shuri’s totally going to tell T’Challa _see, he totally forgives you for how you sort of ruined his life! I think he even likes you! So maybe stop feeling guilty about the whole fighting thing._

To Shuri’s amusement, Bucky makes a game attempt at asking after T’Challa too, with a courtesy that comes across as decidedly rusty, but genuine.

“So, uh, things were pretty eventful while I was in cryo, I hear.”

“Ah, yes, we had some—difficulties, after my coronation. And of course, Wakanda has now revealed its true nature to the world.”

“_Difficulties_, he says! He means he got stabbed by our murderous cousin and then tossed off a cliff into a ravine and left for dead.”

“I don’t think the details are really necessary,” says T’Challa with a wince, then he tries for a cheerful smile. “I didn’t die, obviously, so it’s fine.” Shuri glares incredulously, and he continues, “It was, of course, unpleasant for both me and my family, but thanks to M’Baku and the Jabari and Nakia, I survived to prevent my cousin from starting a global war.”

Shuri scowls, abruptly furious at this blasé summary of events, and she’s about to give T’Challa a slap and an earful for describing the literal worst day of her life as merely _unpleasant_, when Bucky says, utterly deadpan, “Yeah, falling to your apparent death into a ravine isn’t fun, I know.” His eyes crease up in a small and genuine, if still slightly sad smile. “I’m glad it went better for you than it did for me.”

T’Challa briefly closes his eyes in pure mortification.

“I am so sorry, I did not mean to bring up—”

Shuri’s anger dissolves like sugar in water, because this absurd situation has turned hilarious. Leave it to T’Challa to stumble into making a bigger deal of this particular shared trauma than is necessary. He’s just so damn _earnest_. She’s a great little sister, so she jumps into the conversation again to keep her dumb, awkward brother from making things any weirder or more uncomfortable.

“Who would have thought, an old defrosted white man and the king of Wakanda have shared life experiences! T’Challa even got sort of frozen afterwards.”

“Shuri—” starts T’Challa in his most deeply aggrieved _why have I been burdened with such a sister _voice, but he’s interrupted by Bucky laughing.

“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not a fun thing to have in common, but hey, things have turned out okay for both of us.” Bucky’s smile turns into a more solemn and commiserating quirk of his lips. “I’m just sorry it took a lot of fighting and losing people to get here.”

“Thank you,” T’Challa tells Bucky. “It was inevitable, I suppose. Not the civil war my cousin ignited, necessarily, but it was inevitable that Wakanda’s choice to stay hidden for so long would have dire consequences. And that my father’s choices would too.”

As furious as Shuri still is at their murderous cousin and all the destruction he’d caused, she knows that the war he’d started wouldn’t have happened at all had Baba not abandoned N’Jadaka. She can’t find it in herself to direct her anger at Baba though, not like T’Challa does. Even Mother is more angry at Baba than Shuri is. Shuri treads lightly around their anger, all too aware that as the youngest, she’s been somewhat insulated from those dire choices T’Challa speaks of.

“We’re fixing it now,” she says, hoping the resolve in her voice will lift some of the weight of sorrow that’s settled on her brother’s brow and shoulders. “What we can fix, anyway.”

“Ah, so you are conceding you can’t fix everything,” says T’Challa with a smile that’s only a little sad.

Shuri affects a haughty head tilt and tosses her braids back. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I am not a goddess, I have _some_ limitations.”

T’Challa and Bucky both laugh, and T’Challa puts his arm around her shoulders in a quick sideways hug. “That’s good, because I prefer having a genius scientist for a sister, not a goddess.”

The conversation turns to lighter topics then, until Nosipho beckons them to the village center for dinner, when all their worries and sorrows are drowned out by the joyous welcome and ebullient cheer of their people. The sun is setting and the day’s work is mostly done, and the village has congregated in the open courtyard in the village center, where tables and benches have been set out, the tables laden with food that Shuri can smell from clear across the courtyard. Someone has already started up some music, something with a lot of clapping.

The formal ceremonies of Wakanda are all well and good with their festivals and weddings and coronations with their ancient rituals and comforting traditions, their delicate balance of solemnity and celebration. But it’s these almost impromptu, definitely informal gatherings that Shuri loves best of all. No fancy clothes needed, no rituals to observe: just good food and good music and good people, all together to have a good time.

“Didn’t realize there was gonna be a party tonight.” says Bucky, blinking in wide-eyed surprise at the colorful tableau of food and festivity that’s sprung up in the village center.

Nosipho comes over to hand them drinks. “Our King and our Princess are visiting, and you are officially free of your trigger words! What more reason for a party could we need?”

“Come on, White Wolf,” says Shuri. “I don’t know what kind of sad 20th century parties you used to attend, but I guarantee this is better.”

“Wait, White Wolf? When did you get that nickname? And why?” asks T’Challa, and Bucky groans, a blush rising on his pale cheeks.

“Please don’t—” he starts, and Shuri cackles.

“Did you not know about Bucky’s adorable new nickname, brother? I think it suits him!”

“This is gonna be like Bucky Bears all over again, I know it—”

“And what is a Bucky Bear? Do you have _other_ animal-centric nicknames?”

“That sounds awfully judge-y from a man called _Black Panther_—”

Shuri smiles so hard her cheeks hurt as they all walk into the happy and warm center of the party, every step seemingly taking them further and further from the grief and violence and sorrow that had brought them together in the first place. Maybe she hasn’t truly fixed any of those things that had brought them together, but in this moment, she’s certain that she’s fixed enough.


	2. A Reunion Postscript

It’s a beautiful afternoon for what Shuri presumes is going to be a touching reunion. The Citadel practically sparkles in the bright sunlight after the morning’s rain, and the smell of damp stone and greenery lingers pleasantly as the heat of the afternoon only just starts to steam away the last of the rain. She had a productive morning working on the outreach centers, and the rest of her afternoon schedule features nothing more pressing than Design Group project updates, so she has the free time to wait for Captain Rogers’ arrival with Bucky and T’Challa.

Ostensibly, she’s here to welcome the Captain to Wakanda, and offer some emotional support for Bucky for his BFF reunion. In actuality, Shuri’s basically here to spectate and indulge her nosiness, which, honestly, isn’t even really nosiness at all, _T’Challa_. Shuri just so happens to be sort of emotionally invested in how this reunion goes, after all her efforts to help remove Bucky’s trigger words. Also, she’s pretty certain that as an exemplary little sister, she is qualified to offer the appropriate level of support: namely, by distracting and/or annoying Bucky into not freaking out.

“Maybe we should have chosen the village as the location for your big reunion with Captain Rogers.”

Shuri eyes Bucky, who has been pacing back and forth in the Citadel’s courtyard at a speed just short of a jog from the moment they got here. He whips towards her with wide eyes.

“What? Why? Is something wrong, or is it not safe for us to be here—”

“No, everything’s fine, calm down,” she says, shaking her head. “I swear, I am this close to finding a sedative that works on your super-powered self. I was just thinking that the goats, at least, could distract you from whatever disastrous feelings spiral you’re clearly in.”

“The goats would just send me on a new feelings spiral of rage when they escape their pen, again, and then I’d have to catch them, and then by the time Steve got here I’d be, I don’t know, covered in hay and mud and smell like goat, which would actually be a worse reunion than him breaking into my apartment and me pretending I don’t know him—”

Shuri’s finding this uncharacteristic torrent of speech from Bucky to be sort of hilarious, if she’s being honest, but T’Challa is a better person than her and is apparently mildly alarmed enough to engage in some kingly intervention. When Bucky’s pacing brings him within range, T’Challa places his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and looks him in the eye.

“Peace, Bucky, all will be well,” he says, and models some deep breathing for Bucky, who sighs, still looking distinctly wild-eyed, but he duly breathes along with T’Challa anyway.

“Yes, it’ll be fine,” says Shuri with an airy wave of her hand. “But let’s focus on what is important here: you pretended you _didn’t know him_?”

Bucky grimaces and steps out of T’Challa’s hold to start pacing again.

“I panicked! I’d just been framed for a bombing!”

T’Challa glares at her, and Shuri just shrugs, before checking her kimoyo bracelet for Captain Rogers’ ETA. He’s due to arrive in a few minutes, so all this panicking has a set endpoint, and she refuses to enable Bucky’s freakout, not after he spent weeks putting off this touching reunion in the first place.

“Ignore Shuri,” her traitorous brother says. “Captain Rogers is eager to see you, and you can both reacquaint yourselves with each other here where you are safe and not in danger of any attack or arrest.”

“Hmm, I don’t think that’s what Bucky is freaking out about here,” says Shuri, and Bucky lets out a panicked sort of groan and runs his hand through his hair.

It may do some good for his restless nerves, but it does his hair no favors. Because she is not completely insensitive to his distress, she does not tell him his hair is now something of a mess; he doesn’t need yet another reason to panic and/or flee.

“Yeah, no, it’s really not,” confirms Bucky. “This is gonna be the first time we’ve spent together when neither of us is brainwashed or actively under attack in seventy years. I don’t think I know how to deal with that.”

“That makes this an occasion for great joy,” says T’Challa, smiling encouragingly, because he is an inveterate optimist and very soft-hearted. “If you speak from the heart, it can’t go wrong.”

T’Challa is paraphrasing their Baba, and for all that Shuri used to find that particular platitude of Baba’s frustrating—Shuri knows from experience that plenty of things can go quite wrong indeed on the journey from heart to mouth—it still makes bittersweet tears spring to her eyes now to hear T’Challa say it.

She blinks her tears back and does her little sister duty, in exactly the way that would have had Baba smiling and trying to hide it.

“Your literal, actual words can go wrong, actually, have you ever heard T’Challa trying to talk to Nakia about his feelings? Okoye always says he’s like an antelope looking into headlights.” Bucky grins and lets out a surprised bark of laughter before T’Challa can scold her, just as she’d intended, so Shuri is free to continue, “But, you know, no matter how wrong your words go, trust me, your warm and squishy feelings are going to be very obvious.”

And that is about as comforting as she’s willing to be before Captain Rogers’ jet lands. The jet is only just visible in the distance now, and fast approaching, thank Bast. Bucky stops in his tracks and stares.

“Shit, what am I even gonna say to him?”

“Who says you have to say anything? I assumed this would be like those heartwarming videos of soldiers returning home to their dogs, people don’t say much in those.”

Bucky turns to her, his panic having given way to bafflement. “Wait, who’s the dog in this scenario?”

Shuri shrugs and smiles sweetly at him. “I suppose we’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

Before Bucky can object to that, the jet begins its final approach, and lands neatly and lightly in the courtyard. Shuri evaluates the jet with interest; it’s no Royal Talon, but the quinjet has some of the same maneuverability and slim profile. She wonders what its fuel requirements are, and if Captain Rogers and his rogue Avengers have any trouble meeting them now that they’re on the run. She’ll have to remember to ask. Maybe she can offer them some upgrades, if it won’t be a security risk…

These thoughts preoccupy her enough that it’s almost a surprise when the jet’s hold opens and a ramp unfurls. Bucky steps forward as if to meet it, then stops and waits. One of Captain Rogers’ friends, the Falcon, exits first, and Shuri hears Bucky stifle a sad groan. Sweet, merciful Bast, Captain Rogers really needs to come out and put them all out of their misery.

The Falcon greets them with a sunny smile, and a sloppy sort of salute. “Your Majesty, Your Highness,” he says, then addresses Bucky with, “Barnes, happy to hear you’re not a Manchurian Candidate murderbot anymore.”

“Thanks. Where’s Steve?”

“He’s coming,” says the Falcon. “Soon as he’s done making himself pretty, I guess.”

Captain Rogers emerges from the jet, stumbling a little, as if he’s been shoved. Which he may well have been, since the Black Widow follows right behind him.

“Shut up, Sam, that’s not—” starts Rogers, before being immediately and visibly derailed by the sight of Bucky, something like terrified joy on his face. “Buck. Hey, hi.”

Rogers and Bucky take a couple halting, small steps towards each other.

“Hi. You have a beard.”

Shuri closes her eyes for a moment. This is painful. Hilarious, yes, but also, _wow_. Bad.

“Yeah, I—a cover, you know, for being on the run? Um, I can, should I go shave…?”

“What? No, it’s, um. It’s good. You look good.”

Shuri makes eye contact with the Falcon, and the exasperation she sees there tells her Rogers has probably been about as much of a disaster as Bucky has been. While Falcon and the Black Widow make their way around the super soldier emotional disaster zone to speak with T’Challa, Rogers and Bucky finally get within arm’s reach of each other. Instead of hugging or anything, they just stop and stare at each other.

“You look good too,” says Rogers. “Are you—how are you, Buck?”

“Better. No more trigger words, and I—my head’s a lot clearer.”

They step closer to each other, then closer still, and there’s a lot of intense eye contact happening. Shuri wonders if they’re taking an asymptotic approach to hugging, and idly considers the equation for such a thing.

“Yeah?” murmurs Rogers.

“Yeah. I’ve—I remember more, now. Seventeen.”

Shuri stifles a gasp.

“What?”

“One of the triggers, it was the word _seventeen_. And it was—there was a memory it was twisted up in. I was seventeen. We were in my room, and you’d just sketched me, and—I remember—”

Bucky steps closer still to Rogers, tilts his face towards his own with astonishing gentleness, and kisses him. Shuri looks for just long enough to make sure that Rogers is kissing Bucky back—he is, his trembling hands now cupping Bucky’s face, his expression full of a ferociously tender love that’s almost painful to see—then she steps away to join T’Challa and the others.

As she takes her brother’s arm in hers, T’Challa steals a quick, wide-eyed glance over his shoulder at where Bucky and Rogers are still exchanging kisses that are swiftly escalating in passion in between what Shuri’s going to assume are murmured declarations of love and devotion.

“Did you know about this?” asks T’Challa.

Shuri tilts her head and squints. “Sort of? I think this makes me their fairy godmother. Fairy princess godmother? Whatever. I helped fix this true love business, is the point.”

T’Challa grins down at her and shakes his head. “And here I thought you couldn’t fix everything.”

“Oh, I know I can’t fix _everything_,” she says, before directing a pointed look down at her brother’s feet. “You’re still wearing those sandals, for example.” T’Challa rolls his eyes, and she continues, “But I think I’ve done a pretty good job of fixing what I can. And so have you.”

“Well, I am trying to, at least.” He kisses her temple. “I could not do it without my genius sister, though.”

“Does that mean I get to make policy proposals now?”

“Not if those policy proposals are still _let’s build a moon base_, no.”

“I was _seven, _you cannot keep holding that over my head!”


End file.
